009 · DragonSource
Modular deployment systems
Proto Limited is the rapid prototyping engine of the DragonSource ecosystem. Designs arrive — generated, drawn or scanned — and leave as parts you can hold, fit and test.
- Platform
- DragonSource 009
- Handoff
- CONSOLE → PROTO
- Based
- United States
The company
We turn designs into parts
Proto Limited is a prototyping shop with a generative front end. The line in the logotype — Modular Deployment Systems — describes how the work is organised: design generation, prototyping, materials, simulation and bodywork are separate modules. Run one on its own, or chain them into a single job.
Work here starts with a file, or with whatever stands in for one. Some files are generated. Some are scanned off a part that already exists. Sometimes what arrives is a paragraph and a photograph of the thing the part has to fit. What they have in common is that none of them is a manufacturable part until an engineer has been through it — wall thickness, draft, fastening, tolerance stack, how it will be held while it is cut. That pass is not optional here.
We are the build end of the ecosystem. The Console generates; Proto builds.
What we work in
- Additive
- FDM · SLA · SLS
- Subtractive
- CNC · Turning · Sheet metal
- Electronic
- PCB fabrication · Assembly
- Simulation
- CFD · FEA · Thermal
Position
One direction, no return channel
Proto is one of three spokes off the Console. The relationship is defined in one direction, and there is nothing pointing back.
- DRAGONGovernance overlayReads the Console, read-only
- CONSOLEGenerator and hubHands off to PROTO — one direction, no return channel
- PROTORapid prototypingReceives generated designs and builds them
The Console generates and hands off. Proto receives, and builds. A design that crosses carries its own disclosure with it — what it is, and whether it was generated — and we do not strip that disclosure at any point in the job. It appears in what we hand back to you.
Nothing goes the other way. Proto does not write to the Console, and nothing about your build is published upstream. DRAGON, the governance overlay, reads the Console read-only; it does not reach into this side at all.
The other spokes
- XOMSocial container
- DIGISTUDIOSStreaming library
Each receives its own handoff from the Console. None of them receives anything from Proto.
Capabilities
Five modules
Each one stands on its own, and they chain — design generation into prototyping, materials into build, simulation into revision.
Standards
How we talk about our work
Everything on this site is meant to be checkable.
We will state
- The formats we take in, and the formats we hand back.
- The processes a part can be made by, and which one we chose for yours.
- The materials on the shortlist, and the compromise each one carries.
- The method — what happens at each step, in order.
- The assumptions behind a simulation, and what the model does not capture.
- When a design was generated, and that it was.
Next
Send us the file
A brief, a sketch, a STEP file or a scan. We will tell you what we would do with it before anything is quoted.