As 3D printing infiltrates various industries, there are not enough engineers who have the background to design, perform and operate the machines. For additive manufacturing to become a common method, manufacturing companies must invest time and money in employee training for both incoming and seasoned engineers.
This can come at a challenge, though, since seasoned manufacturers are often reluctant to learn new technologies. Also, the lack of awareness regarding different 3D printing technologies sometimes becomes a challenge. The technical know-how required to understand how the product will be manufactured and the kind of quality expected from each technology creates a difference between expectation and reality. Delivering what is expected from an apex 3D Printing and Manufacturing firm Shapefy is making a difference in the 3D printing space.
Shapefy provides end-to-end product development and manufacturing solutions, helping customers starting from just an idea to full scale manufacturing. It helps individuals and businesses with their projects at any stage of development. “Our industrial engineers take care of all the designing and 3d printing iterations to provide the customer with a working prototype,” says Lakshay Wadhwa, Founder and CEO of Shapefy. This prototype can be used for design verification and initial level product testing.
After this vacuum casting can be incorporated for low to medium quantities of looks-like models for beta/internal testing, marketing photography, investor pitches, trade shows or to fulfil initial customer orders. This process acts as a fail-safe method to test out the product before investing heavily into injection moulds and tooling.
For full scale production, the team of Shapefy provides injection moulding services in all commercially available materials, SPI grade finishes and Mold-tech equivalent textures. “With a vast network of highly vetted manufacturing partners, no part is too big or too small for us,” shares Lakshay.
Functionality of Shapefy
The company has developed a digital instant quote platform accessible through the web. It helps potential clients from across the industry get an instant quote for their products and move to production within minutes. This helps save time and labour costs. “The process of product development is highly accelerated with the help of our online platform as our clients can see results quickly,” shares the team of Shapefy.
Shapefy provides all kinds of rapid prototyping and manufacturing services including but not limited to 3D printing, Vacuum Casting, CNC machining and Injection moulding. Under 3D Printing we have Desktop and Industrial FDM, Industrial SLAand DLP, SLS, MJF and even Metal Printing.
“With vacuum casting, you can get production quality parts at low volumes and without the high costs and lead times of steel or aluminium tooling,” informs Lakshay. This is helpful for bringing new products to market where one can get production-grade products to test with new customers and markets and validate their design hypotheses before making a substantial investment to scale manufacturing.
Typically, each silicone mould will produce 25 castings. It is also ideal for prototyping elastomeric parts such as complex gaskets and over moulds on rigid parts.
CNC Machining service with instant quotes and feedback – Parts as fast as 2 days, Shapefy’s vetted network of precision CNC partners can hit tolerances as tight as +/- 0.005mm in more than 50 different plastics and metals. 3,4 and 5 axis CNC milling capabilities for simple and complex geometries. Standard and live tooling capabilities are implemented for cylindrical parts such as pins, shafts, or parts with general rotational symmetry.
Injection moulding services with low minimum order quantities and free manufacturability feedback with every quote is facilitated by Shapefy. T1 samples can be made in as fast as 10 days with no minimum order quantities, the team of Shapefy can do rapid design moulds which are ideal for part design validation, low volume production, and bridge production quantities along with Production Tooling ideal for higher volume production parts, starting at 10,000 units with support for multi cavity tooling.
The Shapifier
“As a founder of Shapefy, I have always wanted to breathe life into machines and ideas. My childhood was mostly spent playing a game called Mechanix. I used to construct mechanical models and projects using steel parts, nuts, bolts, wheels etc. I also tried repairing some of the electrical appliances at home, trying to fix them with whatever expertise I had of using a soldering iron, changing some burnt out resistors and capacitors, and instead I ended up making them non-functional in the process. All of this resulted in me developing an interest towards learning new things and implementing new ideas wherever possible.”
“In my early teens, I worked on some interesting electronics projects that ranged from simple push button LED lights to remote controlled cars. Eventually, I purchased my first 3D printer six years ago, to print some small models and providing 3D printing as a service. This led to Shapefy being born in one corner of my room, and the rest is history.”
Shaping the Future of Printing
Shapefy enables individuals and businesses to bring their ideas from inception to postproduction and fulfilment with its end-to-end solution offerings in 3D printing and manufacturing. Founded in 2017, Shapefy is headquartered in Hyderabad with a network of innovative partners around the world. The company has a network of over 100 businesses and has manufactured over 10 Lakh parts.
Unlike desktop printers or makerspaces, the Shapefy platform offers services from its own studios and global supply chain network. Printing in over 50 materials and finishes, Shapefy provides 3D printing manufacturing solutions to individuals and businesses of all sizes across a multitude of industries. Businesses in medical, robotics, drones, education, consumer products, to name a few, have all benefited from direct access to the most innovative technology and industrial-quality materials.
The company not only caters to businesses and corporates but also focuses on individuals and studentsfor their small projects. Its online platform really makes it easy for individuals to place and manage orders. Its team also works with a lot of startups to help develop their products and guide them throughout their product life cycle.
The team of Shapefy plans to further dive into the B2C space, targeting normal school and college going students. “This is where we think we can make the biggest impact,” suggests Lakshay. Incorporating 3D printing much early into the product development will result in a surge of new technological advances. This is where our online digital platform comes into picture. Project management and guided quote generation makes it easy for a normal consumer to go online and order 3D prints and machined parts, etc., for their projects.
“We plan to revamp our online digital platform to bring more accurate pricing for all 3D printing technologies along with other traditional methods of Vacuum casting, CNC Machining and Injection moulding,” states Lakshay. It will further allow the team of Shapefy to save labour costs in preparing manual quotes and conduct deep manufacturability analysis.
The initial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a sudden decline in the 3D printing and the manufacturing demand as most companies stopped their research, development, and prototyping phases. But somehow this resulted in even more startups coming up with Covid-related products helping in detection, education, relief, and adherence to COVID-19 guidelines etc. “We plan on leveraging our expertise for customers to get their Covid-19 solutions or products designed and manufactured seamlessly,” concludes Lakshay.
