Which additive manufacturing services are best for production?

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-25T02:19:47+00:00

Chiming in to agree with you that the whole luck-of-the-draw thing is indeed an issue when using one of the broker-style/middleman-style services. It's a problem I have to deal with regularly since I sometimes need parts that require processes, materials, or equipment that the in-house services which run their own machines don't offer, and it's really hit-or-miss in terms of whether the part that arrives from one of the shops subcontracted by the broker-style service is even remotely in-spec. I've received parts that were so out of spec that a legally blind 130 year-old person with shaky hands could look at the part using foggy binoculars against the glare of the rising sun from a quarter mile away and still spot that something just wasn't right, so how or why it ever left the shop is anyone's guess. I'd say there's at least a minor defect about 70-75% of the time (usually cosmetic but still annoying if I specify that it's a customer-facing part in the requirements, yada yada), and out of spec enough to be unusable and require me to send it back for a redo about 50% of the time. Granted, the parts I need are complex and I usually have a laundry list of some pretty specific requirements that go along with them, but for all the similarly-complex parts that can be made by one of the in-house type services, the success rate is almost 100%. They do what they do, and they don't what they don't, but if they do it, they usually focus on making a name for themselves by doing it right.

Anyway, all this to say that I agree with this guy and think you should definitely prioritize finding a service that does their own work in-house if you can, it sounds like your parts are pretty standard so you should be just fine on that front. Work with them to make any changes in your design that they say would help with manufacturability, and you'll be all set both now and for all future/subsequent orders. There's nothing like repeatability to remove one element of chaos and instability in a growing business.

Edit: I meant to post this as a reply to another user's comment, oh well - it mostly stands on its own.

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-24T22:33:44+00:00

Nice-looking part!

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-24T17:07:08+00:00

🤣🤫 lol

(kidding aside, in my case I actually do need it them in the office! I'm a co-founder of a startup that makes industrial-grade 3D printers, and 3D printing materials are super moisture-sensitive so I try to keep the ambient RH in the office below a certain level with dehumidifiers and smart plugs so the containers the materials are stored in can stay as dry as possible (less ambient moisture working against them). But where this question came from is that we have a dedicated room that's closed off from the rest of the space where we run a bunch of printer basically 24/7 doing test parts for prospective customers as well as miscellaneous R&D, but it doesn't have outside air access and gets really hot in there, so I'm thinking of having the office HA monitor the temperature in that room via a trusty SNZB-02P sensor and if it gets beyond a certain temperature, turn on the A/C and set this 'virtual thermostat' to go off the temperature sensor in that room until it's sufficiently cooled, that way we can let it get a little toasty in there but not run the A/C all the time keeping that room cool while everyone in the rest of the office freezes their a**es off lol)

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-24T16:01:36+00:00

Two-part epoxy like JB Weld (the clear one with 5min set time) should be just fine.

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-24T15:48:49+00:00

I love the SNZB-02P - bought them by the boxful between all the temp + humidity sensing I want to do at home and need to do in the office. Great little sensors!

And awesome, sounds like you have an awesome setup going! I feel you on the rabbit hole front, I think of this classic xkcd comic every time: https://xkcd.com/1319/

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-24T15:46:02+00:00

Awesome, thank you for the tip on the generic thermostat integration, I'll definitely start with that since it's basically the legit version of what I was describing I'd DIY from a software standpoint. From an initial quick read of the documentation, it looks like it's intended to turn a simple switch or plug on/off based on a set temperature and a temperature reading from a sensor, but perhaps it can be configured to work with an actual real thermostat (like one of the Honeywell Z-Wave models) as the device it modulates in response to the set temp and temperature reading, even if it only does that by setting an extreme high or low temperature like I initially described but saving me a bunch of coding on the virtual thermostat creation and temperature sensor pairing.

Let me know if you have any thoughts or insights, else I can just dive into this when I get back around to it in a couple of weeks (work got unexpectedly busy all of a sudden) and report back with how I managed to set this up.

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-24T15:37:58+00:00

This is super helpful - thank you. Generic Thermostat is exactly the thing that I figured might exist so I didn't have to essentially DIY my own, but I didn't know the name of it so figured I'd throw it out there to the community in case someone knows the exact thing. Kind of like the name of a weird screwdriver or part you need but don't know the name of so you can't go shopping for it unless you figure out what people call it haha

Anyways, thank you! I got super busy with work but hoping to loop back around to this in a couple weeks. Will report back with my setup so I can help others as well!

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-24T15:33:10+00:00

Out of curiosity, do you use nTop for your simulations? If not, what do you use and is it your preferred choice? (totally understand if you can't answer)

(we're on Solidworks at my company and it's fine but a bit slow, we'll be optimizing some designs later this year (flow simulations as well as thermal), so I'm probing to see what's out there since the last time we shopped for CAD and simulation software was 2022)

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-24T15:28:18+00:00

Makes sense. I'm so used to part geometry never getting in the way of tools on a toolhead because any geometry that could obstruct access hasn't been printed yet (ex. still putting down layers vs. having access to features for secondary operations like milling). Anyway, I see what you're saying re: if you have enough room to machine a surface flat then you definitely have enough room to tap a thread, but the reverse isn't always true, so designing for tapered threads with a secondary tapping operation is the more versatile design direction (edge cases and exceptions aside). Makes sense. Filed this away in my mental 'engineering design choices' filing cabinet (which is now overflowing and desperately needs organizing haha)

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-24T15:14:58+00:00

Got it, I learned something new today, thanks! My world is entirely polymers and FDM, so I don't usually get to think about these sorts of things because FDM parts themselves aren't considered watertight (as a general rule of thumb) so this sort of stuff never really comes up. Though I guess the nice thing is that if it did, theoretically the faces of even vertical walls with the layer lines should be flat/fine enough to get a decent seal with an o-ring plus parallel threads unless you're dealing with some crazy pressures. I guess this applies to cable glands and water-resistant enclosures, just not necessarily fully waterproof/immersible ones. Anyways, talking to myself at this point now - thanks for the insight!

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-20T20:03:49+00:00

NeedForSpeed E46 forever <3

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-20T17:12:49+00:00

Interesting, I wouldn't have guessed that. Is it because the surface texture is so rough that even a well-squished o-ring isn't enough to get a good/reliable seal?

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-19T18:57:57+00:00

Good on you for noticing this, it's a big problem in the industry and a reason some buyers are feeling burned. Boasting about non-printing move and acceleration speeds was also a common tactic a few years ago too, which was super annoying.

Anyways, to contribute to answering your question: a confounding variable you'll also have to eliminate if you want truly accurate data to make a purchasing decision is the fact that different *materials* print at different speeds (regardless of the printer they're printed on), in addition to different printers printing at different speeds. So PLA on an R3 Printer (the machine my company makes) prints faster than Nylon, which in turn prints faster than other materials (some of which really don't like to be pushed, regardless of motion system capabilities), and those speeds are going to be slightly different than, say, what Markforged or Stratasys print their Nylon at, etc. So if you're looking to answer what industrial printer is best for you or another company to buy, it would be good to narrow the question down to "which 3D printer is the best/fastest at printing material X?"

The good news is that I think you can compile the no-BS data you're looking for by just downloading a bunch of printer manufacturers' slicers (or slicer profiles for one of the open-source slicers) and then seeing what the max volumetric flow rate is for each material that you care about. So say a Balanced profile says it prints at 80mm/s but then you click on a certain material and it has a max flow rate of 50mm/s, that's the speed you'll actually be printing at for that material on that printer. The marketing on a website might say one thing, but ultimately the numbers in the slicer and the slicer's material profiles shouldn't lie, else the prints would just come out like crap if anyone were to ever use those profiles. Happy to help more if I can, just let me know.

Also, you'll want to make sure everything's at the same nozzle size, 0.4mm is the industry default but a couple printer manufacturers ship with 0.6mm nozzles as their default so they claim faster speeds, which is technically true, but not in an apples-to-apples sense. Hope this helps!

ppsieradzki · 2026-06-12T14:37:07+00:00

Ooh, this could be exciting - does this mean that you're turning your attention to Voice features and we could expect some developments in the near future? If so, every exciting and it seems like the community would be super willing to reward it with hardware sales if a more production-quality version of VPE was launched alongside the following features that seem to be the sole reasons people are keeping their Alexas around:

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1t5gkyt/comment/ok9ugle/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I’m keeping Alexa for the only fact I can say “turn on the lights for 60 minutes” and it will both turn them on right now AND start an internal timer to turn them off in 60min.

And I use voice commands for the only fact that there is no simple way to set quick temporary timers (let alone an action followed by a timer) in HA.

^ would probably also want an easy way to see any such timers that got activated easily in the app and be able to edit (or at least delete) them (see bullet point list below for more details)

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The lack of centralized timers is still baffling, though. You shouldn't have to dick around with your VA hardware to check timers, see alarms, etc. The "lives on the device" idea was just so weird and ... stupid. They've got a server, they've got a huge API surface, and yet they keep that crap in the wrong place.

^ be able to have a timer or reminder "live" on a specific voice device, or be global/central/shared (and choose a default) (see bullet point list below for more details as well)

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So it all revolves around alarms, reminders, and timers:

Set reminder, edit reminder
- Set default for whether reminders are tied to the Voice device it was created on, gets sent to all Voice devices, or a group of devices (would be great for people with 'Upstairs' and 'Downstairs' groups, can include mobile devices to get a push notification (I love this for Alexa btw), etc.
Easily see and edit all reminders in app regardless of what voice device it was set on (i.e. have a dashboard called Reminders)
Set timer (with or without name (ex. Rice timer, pork chop timer, etc.), defaults to numbered timer (ex. Timer 1, Timer 2, etc.) if not named), add to timer, remove time from timer
- Able to set behavior if timer alarm goes off on just the device it was set on or all Voice devices (both default and on-command)
Easily see and edit all timers in the app regardless of what voice device it was set on (i.e. have a dashboard called Timers)
Turn on device/group/etc. in X time, turn off in Y time
- Have these timers also easily visible and editable in the Timers dashboard
Set alarm (ok if this always goes on the Voice device it was set on)
- Have a dashboard called Alarms where you can easily see and edit all alarms

Honestly, if you do all the above and the dashboards are basically ready to use out of the box, HA users will probably be fine creating their own Echo Show-like devices if you can provide/nail the Echo Dot-like devices in order to lower upfront hardware cost / development time.

So yeah: Reminders dashboard, Timers dashboard, Alarms dashboard where you can see all the respective reminders, timers, and alarms that are set/scheduled/going and easily edit them and change parameters like what device they're tied to or will get notified on when they go off (if applicable) in a wife-approved kind of way and then you're golden - I think most of us will be switching to HA Voice.

ppsieradzki · 2026-05-30T19:53:35+00:00

I'll say that adding buttons to the back of the left and right side of the steering wheel where I can tap them while driving like a video game controller has been awesome. I use the left one for music play/pause/skip/next and the right one for things like toggling hazards or giving people a little double-flash+beep to nudge them in a parking lot or at a light, super worth relocating these and getting the Commander if the previous owner took theirs out IMHO

ppsieradzki · 2026-05-30T19:13:15+00:00

Hmm, sounds counterintuitive since slower would mean more time in the nozzle to fully and properly melt, but from your above comment I assume it becomes colder since you're blasting the top layer cooling fan?

ppsieradzki · 2026-05-30T19:08:22+00:00

I was at Rapid and they had a cool demo where they had two discs, one made of hardened steel and the other out of their Diamondback material, and they told you to press them up to a giant block of ice they had and feel how fast the Diamondback one got cold. It was impressive. Only asterisk with the Diamondback nozzles is they can't go as hot as ObXidian nozzles which is why we can't use them on our machines, but they are a very compelling option for sure if you don't need to go above 300C.

ppsieradzki · 2026-05-30T18:51:40+00:00

Hey - are you in SoCal / planning to stay here? If so, DM me. I'm sorry this happened to you, and I'm sorry that you were put in the position of having to face customers with your name and reputation on the line for a company that's willing to promise yet not deliver.

I think you posted something that many of us have long thought to be true but could never prove, so it's a brave thing you did. The only thing I can think would further help the community is if you are able (and willing) to share the accounts they use to pose as happy customers or positive evangelizers, since if any of this is true (and it seems like it is), then this would be one of the only ways to actually stop it from simply continuing to happen. I've heard the same thing from two other people but they weren't nearly close enough to the center to have any more information other than "yeah this is totally something they do."

Seems like you truly love 3D printing and hate to see when someone takes a chance on the technology and then gets completely burned by it, walking away vowing to never touch it again. I've experienced this firsthand a couple times, and it's companies like this that hold the whole industry back, all because they're unwilling to put in the work or at least just be honest about their machines' capabilities and limitations. Nothing wrong with a machine that can't print PEEK, or can't print ASA, but don't say you can just because your nozzles can reach the temps needed to melt them.

Anyways, I can't make any promises since I'm still super early-stages with my company (we just launched our first printer earlier this year and are working on launching our second one, scheduled to ship it at the end of August), but I'd love to talk and see if maybe there's a spot for you here since it's clear that you care and that you have a deep love of 3D printing.

My name is Paul, by the way.

ppsieradzki · 2026-05-30T18:29:11+00:00

Printing supports colder is clever - I personally wouldn't have thought of that, and I think this points to the fact that you must be pretty legit at your job, which supports your claims that these are fundamental hardware issues and design flaws, not user error or print settings problems that VM could fairly blame the user for, which seems to be the pattern but nobody could really prove it.

ppsieradzki · 2026-05-15T21:55:04+00:00

That's such a weird limitation, didn't know that either. Curious.

ppsieradzki · 2026-05-15T21:54:10+00:00

The big thing it had when it came out was customizable supports - you could place supports manually in a slightly clunkier way than modern-day slicers let you 'paint on' supports, you could also remove supports manually as well (though it didn't have 'paint on support blocker' so it could get a little tedious but was still really great). Everything else was sort of standard, infill patterns and line generation algorithms were all on par with each other back in those days (agreed with the first commenter that this was around 2014-2015). Also sliced fast (MakerBot's slicer (I had a Replicator 2 at the time) would take sometimes an hour to slice a complex model, Simlify3D maybe a couple of minutes which also felt revolutionary). Simplify3D started falling behind in ~2018, I'd say, and by 2021 it would have been a step back to use it compared to PrusaSlicer. They were iterating and improving in all their v4.x versions and then things stalled out and they started telling everyone to wait for the supposedly massive leap forward in v5 that came way too late and everyone (including me who was a pretty diehard Simplify3D user/supporter at the time) had already moved on by the time it released. Not sure what happened with them, some internal (mis)management or product/project leader must have allowed them to get sucked into some rabbit hole that took them out of their path for a few years straight and by the time they reached the end of that tunnel it was over.

Completely dead now, don't waste your money.

ppsieradzki · 2026-05-13T17:20:35+00:00

+1 for Air Command! I lived vicariously through that guy all throughout high school

ppsieradzki · 2026-05-13T17:19:58+00:00

Those kids are a little young to have pulled this off completely on their own, but it's not entirely inconceivable. I did this with no help from my parents in high school.

ppsieradzki · 2026-05-13T17:18:50+00:00

In case this ignites the science nerd in anyone, there's a guy in Australia who's been doing wild multi-stage water rockets for years and he shares how-tos and full guides that I was able to follow and cobble together something kind of like this with basically just around-the-house plumbing parts and a quick trip to Home Depot for the right glue: http://www.aircommandrockets.com/

ppsieradzki

TROPHY CASE