FAQ
How the work runs
Process questions, answered plainly. Turnaround, price and tolerance get quoted against your job — none of them would be true before we have seen it.
Getting started
Sending work in
What happens after I send you a file?
A person opens it before anything is quoted. We look at the geometry against the process you have in mind: minimum feature size, tool access, how the part would be held, where support would have to go, what the split lines want to be.
You get back what we would do, what we would change, and what we still need from you. If the part cannot be made as drawn, you hear that at this point — not after it has been built.
What formats do you accept?
Solid geometry as STEP or IGES. Meshes as STL, OBJ or glTF. Scan data as PLY or STL. Electronics as Gerber, KiCad or Altium output. Drawings, with the critical dimensions marked on them.
If what you actually have is a written brief, a hand sketch or a photograph of the thing the part has to fit — send that. It is a legitimate starting point and a lot of work begins there.
What do you need from me to quote?
Geometry or an envelope. What the part has to do and survive — loads, duty cycle, temperature, environment. How many you want. The process you have in mind, if you have one. And any constraint that is not negotiable: a fixing, a clearance, a regulation, a date you are working to.
If a piece of that is missing we will ask rather than assume. A quote built on a guess is not a quote, and it is the sort of thing that turns into an argument later.
Who owns the intellectual property in what I send?
You do. We do not claim ownership of your geometry, your drawings or your brief, and sending them to us does not change who they belong to.
We keep a copy so we can build the job and support it afterwards. We do not put your work on this website, or anywhere else public, without asking you first. If you want something more formal than that in place, raise it before you send files.
Can we work under a confidentiality agreement?
Send yours before you send files and we will read it. We would rather work to your terms than push a template at you, and we will say plainly if there is anything in it we cannot sign.
Method
How the work runs
What does "prototype" mean here — and what does it not?
It means a real part, made by a real process, that you can hold, fit, load and test. It tells you whether the geometry works, whether it goes together, and where it fails first.
It does not mean a certified production component. A prototype is not evidence that a part is safe to sell, safe for the road, or ready for a customer. Anything that has to carry that weight needs testing and sign-off beyond what a prototype run gives you.
How do you decide what a part should be made from?
Against your case, not a catalogue. First the case gets written down: loads, duty cycle, temperatures, chemicals, UV, cycle count, and what failure would actually cost. A material choice is only as good as the case it was chosen against.
Then the field narrows — by property fit, and by whether the material can survive the process that has to form it. You see the shortlist with its compromises stated: stiffness against mass, cost against durability, ideal against manufacturable. Where the decision is close or expensive, we build coupons instead of deciding on datasheets. Published material properties are supplier figures measured under supplier conditions; your part is not a test coupon.
How should I read a simulation result?
As a model of reality, not a measurement of it. Every report states the geometry it ran on, the boundary conditions, the assumptions behind each one, and — explicitly — what the model does not capture.
We report deltas against your baseline rather than headline percentages, because the baseline is the thing that makes a number mean anything. A result moving in the right direction is a reason to build the part and measure it. It is not a substitute for doing so, and we will not present it as one.
What happens to designs that arrive from the Console?
That link is specified and not yet built, so nothing arrives through it today. The contract is written so a design carries its own disclosure — what it is, and whether it was generated — and so that we never strip it.
It is designed to run one way: the Console generates and hands off, Proto builds. Nothing about your build would be written back upstream. There is no return channel.
Do generated designs get built exactly as they arrive?
No. Generated geometry is a first draft. A person rebuilds the chosen direction as parametric CAD — wall thicknesses, draft, fastening, tolerance stack — before anything is made. Generation gets you to a candidate quickly; it does not get you to a part, and we would be lying if we said otherwise.
What if the part cannot be made as designed?
You hear it before we build, along with what we would change. Sometimes the fix is geometry — a radius, a wall, a draft angle, a split line. Sometimes it is the process: printed where the geometry wins, machined where surface and stiffness win. Sometimes the honest answer is that the part wants to be two parts.
What we will not do is quietly build something we expect to fail and let you discover it.
How do revisions work?
Every build comes back with as-built notes: what changed, why it changed, and what to watch on the next revision. Those notes are the input to the next round. A revision is quoted like any other job — against the change in front of us, not against a schedule published in advance.
The method behind each module is written out on the service pages, the images on Work are stock reference renders and sketches, and what we put in writing on a job is set out on About.
Still unanswered
Ask the awkward one
If the question you have is not here, it is usually the useful one. Put it in an email and you will get a straight answer.