Get Better Parts Faster with On-Demand Manufacturing

(Image courtesy of Plethora.)

As on-demand manufacturing becomes more popular, engineers are faced with a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, on-demand manufacturing offers fast turnarounds and options for easy prototyping and short runs in the early stages of product development. On the other hand, some engineers may be hesitant to trust the production of crucial components or prototypes to an external service, especially given the risk of design errors going unnoticed.

To borrow a term from software developers, what’s needed is a way to “debug” CAD models and ensure that the final product has been produced according to specifications. That’s the idea behind Plethora, an on-demand manufacturer offering CNC milling and turning services.

“Essentially, we help people make things very quickly,” explained Nick Pinkston, founder and CEO of Plethora. “To do so, we have a two-part solution. One is an automated design for manufacturability system on the web that will take your files from any format and give you an instant price and part analysis on them for milling and turning. After that, it goes to the second part, which is our automated factory, and generates the code for the machines, including fixturing and tooling. We then run those parts and QC them.”

Pinkston explained that Plethora’s perspective is adopted from the software industry, something that carries over to the way the company views its role in manufacturing: “We debug your parts and then compile them at the factory,” he said.

Design for Manufacturability Online

(Image courtesy of Plethora.)

It’s a common complaint amongst manufacturing engineers: design engineers don’t give enough consideration to manufacturability. Whether it’s because the model has square inside corners, inaccessible features or a host of other potential issues, designing a part that isn’t manufacturable can lead to significant delays while the design and manufacturing teams hash out a compromise.

(Image courtesy of Plethora.)

Plethora’s DFM system avoids those delays by providing instant feedback on manufacturability and instant pricing. “Within a few seconds—usually two—our DFM system will come back with all the various DFM suggestions that we have, and it will tell you how to fix them by highlighting them on your part,” said Pinkston. “This system knows our tooling down to the individual drill bits and flute lengths. If we don’t have a drill bit, for example, it will add more time to the turnaround so we can order it.”

(Image courtesy of Plethora.)

It’s this automated approach that allows Plethora to offer fast turnaround for its services. As Pinkston explained, “Our average is about three days, but we’ve done parts as fast as a few hours. We actually had a race car that broke a shock mount, so they sent us the CAD and we had it through the whole system in two hours and couriered it down to the track.”

Plethora's DFM system can also be used by uploading a CAD directly to their company website, for those who don’t want to install the plugin in their CAD program of choice. “It works like a clone of what happens in CAD,” said Pinkston, “though you you’ll need to re-upload the updated part if it requires change.”

In fact, the entire process of uploading a design, checking it for manufacturability and placing an order for the parts can happen without ever having to pick up the phone or even send an email. Of course, the human element is still an integral part of Plethora’s approach.

(Image courtesy of Plethora.)

“We have both machine operators and machinists,” said Pinkston. “Some things have to be done in the traditional way, especially if there are really tricky features. Before it goes to the machine, everything is simulated and sometimes that simulation will reveal an error in the automation. In that case, we do things the traditional way. This is why we guarantee three days, because if something happens and it’s a complicated part, it might take a couple of days to get it right, but parts that are automated flow through in a couple of hours.”

On-Demand Manufacturing

Some on-demand manufacturers operate under a network model, leasing machine time from other companies. Plethora, however, keeps its operations under one roof to ensure quality and speed. “We wanted our engineering team right next to the machines they make the software for,” said Pinkston.

Currently, the company has a mix of 3- and 5-axis machining centers, as well as multi-axis turning centers. “We’re very vertically integrated, or what we call ‘full stack,’” Pinkston said. “Every piece of software and hardware that we use we have full control over. That’s one of the reasons we have our own factory.”

(Image courtesy of Plethora.)

The company works with all common metals and plastics and accommodates others on request. This diversity carries over into Plethora’s customers as well. “We have a lot of customers in the automotive and robotics industries, and also biotech,” said Pinkston. “We also work with a lot of contract engineering firms: people who make parts for other people. We see lots of cool projects from inventors and we even get some work from local artists.”

Being situated in the San Francisco Bay Area also means that Plethora has played a role in some interesting projects. “I think we’ve made parts for pretty much everyone who’s working on self-driving cars out here,” said Pinkston. “We also had a flying car engine that we made a bunch of parts for, which is about as futuristic as you can get, and I love seeing parts for VR and AR applications come through.”

At the far end of the manufacturing process, every part Plethora produces goes through a quality control process.

(Image courtesy of Plethora.)

“We have a full climate-controlled quality lab with everything from standard hand tools to a coordinate measuring machine,” said Pinkston. “Every part is inspected.”

Standard tolerances at Plethora are +/-0.005” on basic features and finishes for top side cuts and surfacing. “You can, of course, spec custom ones, but we tend to avoid going more than +/-0.001” on milled features and +/-0.0005” on turned features,” said Pinkston.

From Design to Manufacturing

It’s one thing to design a better mousetrap, but quite another to actually produce one, even as a prototype. For those aspiring inventors who are just starting out, Pinkston offered the following advice:

“This is probably going to sound like a broken record in the industry, but before you even design something, think about the process you’re going to use and how it’s best exemplified. We’ve had people visit us and say, ‘Oh wow, milling machines! We’ve never seen these before,’ and that’s really surprising coming from engineers. It’s amazing to me.”

Designing for manufacturability isn’t easy, whether you’re coming from an OEM, SME or working out of your garage. Plethora provides the resources to make DFM easier and more attainable.

For more information, visit the Plethora website.

- Plethora Corp. has sponsored this post. All opinions are mine. Ian Wright