Bridge Manufacturing is the use of rapid prototyping or additive fabrication techniques to make a product whose demand is substantial enough to warrant moving to traditional manufacturing techniques such as injection molding. This occurs when demand makes it more cost effective to make products using molds or tooling instead of 3D printing.

Hiya,

How is this factored into the cost?

Do we get notified when this happens?

Is this restricted to certain materials?

Will lead times be affected?

Etc!

Cheers,

Luis.

When an item becomes wildly popular, we will contact you to discuss how best to handle orders and work with you to make the item available through mass manufacturing.

We will do this automatically.
You will be notified
You will be a part of all decisions
Prices will go down with traditional manufacturing

The cost to do this will, at our discretion, be absorbed by Kraftwurx and no cost to you.

Hiya,

Thank you for your response, although I wouldn't mind a little more detail...

Let's say it's a plastic print, that costs $40 (our 'Store cost' to our customer, which includes our percentage/margin):

- Where is the demand cutoff point, the point at which you will then push it onto Bridge Manufacturing?

- What time gap is introduced between the '3D print' to when it gets sent to the 'traditional print'? I'm concerned with delivery delays here.

- As the cost for production goes down: What happens to our 'Store cost'? Will this be linked in to the Bridge Manufacturing process and go down accordingly (and still maintain our percentage/margin)?

- When it gets sent to the 'traditional printer': Will the items be dispatched from there to our customers or will they be sent in bulk to Kraftwurx for re-distribution? Concerned here with delays and packaging.

- Would the process be viewable on our account? In case customers require updates to their delivery schedule, or will they be notified of this? Without them necessarily being informed that it's due to a change in the process!

I understand that these would vary according to the materials and processes but an 'average' timescale would help.

Cheers,

Luis.

There's also the issue of inventory, a subject anathema to "print on demand", but a necessity in larger scale manufacturing.

Hi there,

Do you all offer any services for runs of a few hundred to a few thousand at a time, incorporating simple electronics? If not, any recommendations on a good place or two that does that kind of thing well and would be kind to some newbies to the process?

Thanks!
Heather and Joe