3D Printing

Not a Print Shop — an Engineering Team That Prints

Plenty of services will print whatever file you upload. We do something different: before a part hits the build plate, an engineer looks at what the part is for. Wall thicknesses, print orientation, layer direction versus load direction, tolerance stack-ups, material behaviour over time — the decisions that separate a part that survives real use from one that merely looks right. Based in Silicon Valley, serving the whole Bay Area — from San Jose to Oakland and the East Bay — and shipping nationwide.

What We Print

• Functional prototypes — enclosures, mounts, and mechanisms you can actually test
• Product enclosures with proper bosses, snap fits, and inserts for electronics
• Jigs, fixtures, and assembly aids for your production line or lab bench
• Looks-like models for pitches, campaigns, and user testing
• Replacement and low-volume parts where tooling would never pay off

Materials and Processes

In-house FDM printing in engineering thermoplastics (PLA, PETG, ABS, TPU) and CNC machining for parts that need tighter tolerances or real material properties. For resin, SLS, and MJF processes we work through vetted partners — the same supplier-vetting discipline we apply on production programs. The honest part of the conversation: we will tell you when 3D printing is the wrong answer for your part, and what the right one costs.

From Printed Prototype to Production Part

This is where a print shop stops and an engineering firm keeps going. A part designed for FDM at quantity 10 is usually the wrong design for quantity 500 — layer adhesion, anisotropy, and per-unit print time all catch up with you. We help you find the crossover: keep printing, move to CNC, cast in urethane from a soft tool, or adapt the design for injection molding. Because we do DFM, tooling, and production transfer as a core service, the same team that printed your first prototype can carry the design all the way to a production line.

Where We Print in the Bay Area

We are based in Silicon Valley and serve the whole Bay Area, and the work genuinely differs by where it comes from. San Francisco is mostly venture-backed teams printing against a demo date. Oakland and the East Bay is industrial and fabrication work where the question is whether the part will hold. San Jose is test and automation fixtures that have to be repeatable. Palo Alto is the earliest stage, where the right answer is often about what to build first. Each city has its own page with the detail:

• 3D printing in San Francisco - enclosures for real electronics, on a demo deadline
• 3D printing in Oakland and the East Bay - load-bearing parts, fixtures and reverse engineering
• 3D printing in San Jose - repeatable test and automation fixtures, honest tolerances
• 3D printing in Palo Alto - earliest-stage work, and what the whole path costs

Why Engineers and Founders Choose Us

• Design feedback included — we flag printability and strength issues before printing, not after
• Material selection driven by the part's job, not by what's loaded in the machine
• Tolerance honesty — we tell you what FDM can hold and what needs CNC
• One accountable team from first print through DFM, tooling, and production ramp
• Same team, same CAD, no handoffs — the prototype learnings survive into production