A Rust Belt Native and Technologist Re-Thinking American Manufacturing
EMachineShop [1] has been doing this for over ten years.[1]  The guy behind eMachineShop,  Jim Lewis, thought he was going to change manufacturing, but ended up just being a very convenient job shop.  eMachineShop, which is in New Jersey, had a writeup in Wired in 2005.[2] The 2005 hype reads like the 2016 hype for Plethora: &quot;Designing stuff used to be just for experts. We&#x27;re bringing it to the masses.&quot;<p>Like Plethora, eMachineShop has a CAD system which can tell you what&#x27;s manufacturable and how much it will cost.  The main difference is that Plethora uses a plug-in to Inventor or Solidworks, so they&#x27;re aimed at pros who have those expensive packages. eMachineShop has a free downloadable CAD program, which understands what their processes can do and will calculate pricing. It&#x27;s an impressive program, one which will prevent you from designing unbuildable parts and warn you if you&#x27;re forcing an unnecessarily expensive operation.<p>Plethora has the San Francisco location, the cool web site with no pricing info, the guy with the neckbeard, the funding to lose money on the first order, and the emphasis on onboarding potential customers for marketing purposes. Maybe that will help them scale.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.emachineshop.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.emachineshop.com</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2005&#x2F;09&#x2F;fablab&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2005&#x2F;09&#x2F;fablab&#x2F;</a>