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Company
How Firstcut came to be
as told by founder Larry Lukis
Firstcut and Protomold are services of Proto Labs, Inc. The full Protomold story is here, but briefly, the idea was to meet the need for plastic prototype and low-volume injection molded parts, and to fill the gap between rapid prototyping and traditional injection molding. Protomold has been quite successful at that, having made over 22,000 molds since its inception back in 1999. The big problem now is where to put them all, but that’s another story altogether.
Back to Firstcut — What we’re really good at is software, CNC machining, and automated manufacturing processes. It dawned on us one day that we could just as well apply our expertise not only to mold making but to machining plastic parts directly. After all, not everybody needs so many parts that injection molding is justified. Not only that, but 80% of Protomold customers make some sort of prototype part before going to injection molding anyway.
Our goal is to make it as easy to get a machined part as it is to get an SLA, FDM or any other “rapid prototype” part. That means fast on-line quoting which has never been done before for machined parts — at least not that I’ve seen. Our automated software running on our in-house compute farm actually generates all the toolpaths required to manufacture the part before we quote it. That’s how we can tell you exactly what it will cost, and we can also show you what it will look like if there are any features which can’t be created with our milling process.
CNC machined parts are far superior to RP parts in accuracy, strength, surface finish and material availability. CNC machined plastic parts are an excellent representation of a molded part. If it wasn’t for the absence of ejector pin marks, you can hardly tell them apart. On the other hand, RP parts can be created in any geometry imaginable, including geometries that can’t be manufactured by any other process. So there are tradeoffs.
When we first thought about doing this we sent 3D models and requested quotes from several machine shops who advertised “machined parts” on their web sites. Half of them no-quoted either because the parts were “beyond our capabilities” (they only quote from 2D drawings!) or they weren’t interested in quoting the 1–10 quantity that we requested. After about a week, we had quotes from 3 different shops. There was a factor of over 10x between the lowest and most expensive, and one of them was higher than Protomold’s price for a mold + 25 samples! I think it has more to do with how busy they are than how much it will actually cost them to make your part. You won't get this at Firstcut. Our pricing algorithm is computer generated based on milling time, raw materials, and fixed cost overhead. And our typical delivery is 1–3 days.
At Firstcut, the CNC programming is completely automated, and we have a proprietary automated fixturing process, so there is never any up-front NRE cost. We are as happy to make 1 part as 10 or 100. We can currently do 3 axis milling from up to six sides of the part to machine as many features as possible.
So if you want all the advantages of rapid prototyping — instant quotes (ok, really fast), delivery in 1–3 days, and low cost — but with better accuracy, better surface finish, and better material selection — upload your CAD model to the Firstcut web site and give us a try!
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