Hatch estimates that 70-80% of the jobs being done on TechShop’s desktop 3-D printers are prototypes, not finished products. “You can iterate two or three times in a single day, and that’s incredibly powerful,” he says. “Sometimes it’s good enough. Sometimes it’s an interior component so it doesn’t really matter what it looks like.” But for finished products, or jobs like custom gears, more accurate machines that can accommodate wood or metal are typically a better fit. Basic 3-D printer plastics, he says, don’t have “the compression strength, the tension.” And for most members, contracting out jobs to industry-quality 3-D printers, who can accommodate a wider range of materials, isn’t economical. “When you amortize the cost, in many cases you should just mill that baby out,” he says.
Desktop dust mitigation and soundproofing solutions are the next business opportunity. So to will be turnkey metal shaving and sawdust recycling.