Anyone using sendcutsend.com? If you're not, watch out!

So I heard about these guys on The Fabricator (article in their magazine). When my local laser cutter when to a $250 minimum (which, in some ways, I understand), I thought I'd give them a try. A whole $29 minimum (per material). I can design a part, upload it (DXF or other formats), get pricing (you can vary material and qty to see $/pc) and order it within 15 minutes. The parts I just ordered on the attached photo (shims of two different materials and a custom spanner wrench that was the same material as the thicker shim) were a total of a whole $84 with shipping. Comes in totally clean and usually less than one week. I've made about 6 orders and only had one glitch (when they were still very new) and they paid for overnight shipping.

So, fabricators, beware! They've obviously figured out a quoting/pricing process that is completely automated (until the parts get too large/heavy for normal packaging and shipping). I doubt there is any human involvement until the package is handed off to FedEx (that could even be automated).

Now machinists, be careful! It's only going to be a matter of time before someone can upload a file format for certain parts and this process will be automated, or at least sped-up from manually processing a quote. In regard to some of the more recent postings, this is related to the fact that any company that wants to remain competitive and/or grow should make sure they have an efficient and effective quoting process. Just getting quotes fast and accurate these days is a huge factor in remaining competitive.

Now, if your business is something you consider a hobby and don't really care if competition takes you out, no big deal. But then I'd also ask, why the hell are you wasting time on an internet forum? Aren't these supposed to be where you can ask a question or give good advice? Are you just going to post something to try and prove that I'm wrong (I'm fine with that as well)? The main reason I'm posting this is to make people aware as it could also come from overseas and I fully support manufacturing in the US (or other countries that pay and treat employees well). I'm not doing it to start an argument, I'll let everyone else waste time on that.

The Dude

Also a good way for the vendor to steal your artwork, and "sell it out the backdoor"

Cheaper is not always better.

digger doug said:

Also a good way for the vendor to steal your artwork, and "sell it out the backdoor"

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I'd be less worried about that with an automated system like these guys or protolabs than a shop where an actual human is involved and decides to run a few extra after work.

DanielG said:

I'd be less worried about that with an automated system like these guys or protolabs than a shop where an actual human is involved and decides to run a few extra after work.

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How can you make such a statement ?

You have NO idea what is beyond the screen....

digger doug said:

How can you make such a statement ?

You have NO idea what is beyond the screen....

Click to expand...

Very easily.

Any time you send a print/model to an outside vendor, you run the risk of it leaking or being used without permission. As far as the relative risk, I know that the smaller shops are quoting and programming these by hand. I also know that, in general, the automated shops do not have humans looking at things when they quote them; it's automated.

I also know that at most of the small shops I've seen, It would be very easy for a programmer/operator to run a few extra parts if they so desired.

Why do you think that a large, automated, low-touch service is higher risk than a traditional shop?

If you'd like another equivalent provider with even lower prices check out OshCut.com

I have not dealt with them personally but I have heard good things and they offer a much wider range of materials. Their quantity discounts are also much deeper as they give you discounts even when you have many different parts in an order, rather than just multiples of a single part...

For those wondering I believe 'OSH' stands for "Open Source Hardware" and the service came from a grassroots need for individuals and small businesses to be able to prototype sheet metal items without the overhead of the slow traditional quoting process... There is another amazing service called 'OSH Park' that provides the same kind of quick turnaround for printed circuit boards as well.

I personally hope services like this become a lot more common. Having a person involved in the quoting of relatively 'simple' things like 3D printing, sheet metal cutting or PCB manufacturing is silly... And yes you're right, this sort of approach will definitely be bringing large changes to many other industries.

I recently tried to get a quote from a couple of laser shops for some part made from 16ga CRS. Only one place out of 3 responded, and he couldn't get my bog standard DXF files to load so he could give me a quote... I ended up having to make dimensioned drawings for him, and then after that he went radio silent and never quoted.. I have had experiences like this with a *lot* of vendors I've approached and it's incredibly frustrating.

I can't use SendCutSenc or OshCut yet because I'm in Canada, but I know OshCut is in the process of adding international shipping, and local vendors had better watch out when they do...

Pretty sure between Vicki Holt (Porotlabs) and Chuck Hull (Quickparts/3d systems) they have the instant quote for machined and printed parts profected. Proto Labs has 600 Machines and would have double that if Haas could supply fast enough. And now with them buying 30 of those massive GE dual head metal printers and all those Lasers and Waterjets I'd say that quoting system will get another infusion of $$$. She said in her interview that they were going to focus on Inco-718, I have to wonder how much a 31.5 X 15.5 X 19 DMLM Inconel 718 part would cost?!?!

I do like the video of them installing 295 Haas in 5 weeks. That's quite an accomplishment....

YouTube

This cuts three ways (at least) - shops/people inside or close to development, where even next day shipping may be too slow, will succeed if they can revise and produce parts very rapidly. Quoting may be irrelevent, but shrewd stocks of tools and material, fast manual skills, even faster CAM skills, shrewd inventories of workholding, will be key to success.

Shops that want to do "on demand" or even "not huge volume" production work will need to get Really Fast and Efficient, and get visible. Don't discount the visibility aspect - for example turns out there are quite a number of "cloud" providers of various sorts, but mostly people know about AWS and AZURE. Would be no trick at all for Jo's Excellent Local Machine shop to get overlooked by a pool of customers who grow up with protolabs or oshcut. Even if Jo is about as fast, adds all sorts of value, and may be cheaper. This class of shop's struggle to keep mindshare is like Pat's Great Burgers vs McDonalds....

And some of the shops that don't answer RFQs didn't really want them. There's at least one shop in Seattle metro that, so far as I can tell, refuses all RFQs that aren't from Boeing or a Boeing Tier 1. They're not open to the public, or the trade, period. If all of your profit is making all the laser cut parts for every variant of the F150, then you maybe really don't want to talk to Aaron, no matter how much more interesting his work is than some silly option on a pickup truck.

The OP's warning really does apply to those folks in the middle. But it's not just about quoting speed, but also visibility.

On the other side, some new machines/technologies can let the first class of shops (inside/prototype/inventor/researcher) turn things around waaaay faster than before. 3d printing can be a startling alternative to setting up for injection molding - by know everybody has heard about this. If you can swallow chinese import's, laser markers have come way down in price, and I expect will come down more. And so forth.

aarongough said:

If you'd like another equivalent provider with even lower prices check out OshCut.com

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I just uploaded a file from a part I had cut locally last week to both of them. 6 pcs from .25" hot roll steel. $103 and change from OshCut, $74 from Sendcutsend, so it looks like Sendcutsend might be the better deal. Both prior to shipping.

For reference, I paid $97 from my local guy. My local guy charged 1/2 hour labor ($75), and $22 for 1/8 of a 4x8' plate. In actuality, those parts would have nested in an 8x22" piece of plate, but I guess they only sell in 1/8 sheet qtys.

bryan_machine said:

This cuts three ways (at least) - shops/people inside or close to development, where even next day shipping may be too slow, will succeed if they can revise and produce parts very rapidly. Quoting may be irrelevent, but shrewd stocks of tools and material, fast manual skills, even faster CAM skills, shrewd inventories of workholding, will be key to success.

Shops that want to do "on demand" or even "not huge volume" production work will need to get Really Fast and Efficient, and get visible. Don't discount the visibility aspect - for example turns out there are quite a number of "cloud" providers of various sorts, but mostly people know about AWS and AZURE. Would be no trick at all for Jo's Excellent Local Machine shop to get overlooked by a pool of customers who grow up with protolabs or oshcut. Even if Jo is about as fast, adds all sorts of value, and may be cheaper. This class of shop's struggle to keep mindshare is like Pat's Great Burgers vs McDonalds....

And some of the shops that don't answer RFQs didn't really want them. There's at least one shop in Seattle metro that, so far as I can tell, refuses all RFQs that aren't from Boeing or a Boeing Tier 1. They're not open to the public, or the trade, period. If all of your profit is making all the laser cut parts for every variant of the F150, then you maybe really don't want to talk to Aaron, no matter how much more interesting his work is than some silly option on a pickup truck.

The OP's warning really does apply to those folks in the middle. But it's not just about quoting speed, but also visibility.

On the other side, some new machines/technologies can let the first class of shops (inside/prototype/inventor/researcher) turn things around waaaay faster than before. 3d printing can be a startling alternative to setting up for injection molding - by know everybody has heard about this. If you can swallow chinese import's, laser markers have come way down in price, and I expect will come down more. And so forth.

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I'm basically so frustrated with outside vendors that shooting for full vertical integration (with the exception of producing raw materials) is getting very high on my list of 'must haves'... I have some vendors that are absolutely fantastic. One screw machine shop in the USA makes small custom fasteners for me with consistently high quality and short timelines. I have a local heat-treat place that does an amazing job, and if there's a problem I give them a single call and they ensure it gets fixed.

However these relationships are bright spots in a history of incredible frustration with other vendors. Heat-treat places that couldn't follow instructions and had employees who would steal. A vendor for a custom fastener that claimed they weren't able to get any stock of 1/4" diameter 303 stainless for 16 weeks continuously to complete my order...

As Bryan said I understand I'm a smaller customer and that some vendors won't want to deal with me. That's totally fine, I just wish they wouldn't come to that conclusion after I already rely on them lol.

Shops with better automation have to be able to quote smaller high mix jobs more efficiently, and I can say that as the sole operator of a small business the consistency of experience that I get from something like OshCut is fantastic... If I have an idea for something on the weekend or middle of the night I can get pricing within a few minutes and put that feedback right into the design of whatever I'm working on.

McMaster Carr has had the same effect on my business... If I need some weird part they most likely have it and I don't have to spend hours scouring the catalogs of the numerous local vendors (if they even have a catalog) to see what is available, then work to create an account with them, wait for the quote, wait for the parts, etc... So much of my time is wasted in that cycle. Any company with traditional salesmen pretty much don't get my business because of the time waste that's built into that sort of process, unless it's for a large one-off purchase.

Just watched that protolabs video.
Some things came to mind. Did haas give them a volume discount? We tried to buy 4 machines at the same time. Not only was there pretty much no discount they wanted to ship on 4 different trucks on 4 different dates so the shipping shot way up.

Also, anyone seen the episode of the sopranos where they try to shake down the coffee shop for protection money? YouTube

Fish On said:

I just uploaded a file from a part I had cut locally last week to both of them. 6 pcs from .25" hot roll steel. $103 and change from OshCut, $74 from Sendcutsend, so it looks like Sendcutsend might be the better deal. Both prior to shipping.

For reference, I paid $97 from my local guy. My local guy charged 1/2 hour labor ($75), and $22 for 1/8 of a 4x8' plate. In actuality, those parts would have nested in an 8x22" piece of plate, but I guess they only sell in 1/8 sheet qtys.

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I have seen some back and forth on pricing between the two as well... Checking both is probably a good thing! I will say I like the file upload process on OshCut a LOT more, much faster!

One local waterjet company I talked to after I couldn't get laser quotes said they wouldn't stock or buy material, I had to buy it and have it sent to them lol. Talk about making it hard on the customer for simple flat parts made from 16GA CRS...

They lost that business to a local metal supplier that has waterjet in house...

bryan_machine said:

On the other side, some new machines/technologies can let the first class of shops (inside/prototype/inventor/researcher) turn things around waaaay faster than before. 3d printing can be a startling alternative to setting up for injection molding - by know everybody has heard about this. If you can swallow chinese import's, laser markers have come way down in price, and I expect will come down more. And so forth.

Click to expand...

An anecdote on this last point:
I have a very cheap 3D printer at home... It was about $400 and only prints PLA, overall not a terribly fast or super accurate machine, but even with those caveats seeing what it can do has really changed how I think about 3D printing.

Most recently I wanted to prototype a machine that needed a small linear stage built in. Normally I'd be thinking there's a baseplate and some profile rails and a screw, then you need the thrust bearing mounts and motor mount and so on...

I wondered how much of all that I could 3D print and this was the end result:



The carriage is fully 3D printed and rides directly on the Thomson round rails, the acme nut gets bolted into a bore in the middle. Printed over a lazy couple of nights where the printer just ran in my closet overnight while I slept or watched TV. No fixtures or soft jaws to make, no real programming to speak of and only $10 or so in material cost. Not gonna win any awards for accuracy or rigidity, but for the use at hand it's beyond enough.

It's not going to fix every problem, but having that kind of capability close at hand is pretty transformative. The potential cost of trying out an idea goes waaaay down. And this is just on the very lowest end... I can't even imagine how amazing it must be for a company to have SLS or similar in house when they used to have to send everything out.

I am thinking about spending some proper coin on a dual extruder machine with water-soluble support material as that would make pretty much any part just by importing the model and clicking print, no need to worry about orientation or overhangs or whatever. I have been impressed with the strength and durability of the parts so far too, especially if you're willing to wait a bit longer for a part printed with thick walls or 100% infill. Being able to run the printer overnight unattended makes the wait time a lot more tolerable too!

Just watched that protolabs video.
Some things came to mind. Did haas give them a volume discount? We tried to buy 4 machines at the same time.

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At Star we ordered 6 at a time (4 VF-2SS's and 2 DT-1's) and always get -25% on the machines and and -20% on options and accessories. I'd bet ProtoLabs gets a tad bit better when ordering a couple hundred at a time.

Thanks for posting this!!!
I've been using OSHPark for years for all my prototype PCB's and OSH Stencils for about 2 years now. Both gave me great quality parts at good prices. I guess with OSH Cut, now I can get chassis and front panels made quickly.

Man, I love this world we live in.

aarongough said:

If you'd like another equivalent provider with even lower prices check out OshCut.com

Click to expand...

DanielG said:

Very easily.

Any time you send a print/model to an outside vendor, you run the risk of it leaking or being used without permission. As far as the relative risk, I know that the smaller shops are quoting and programming these by hand. I also know that, in general, the automated shops do not have humans looking at things when they quote them; it's automated.

I also know that at most of the small shops I've seen, It would be very easy for a programmer/operator to run a few extra parts if they so desired.

Why do you think that a large, automated, low-touch service is higher risk than a traditional shop?

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Exactly why using the cloud for your data is fraught with risk. Once your IP leaves your possession, it is essentially public and no longer yours.

DanielG said:

Very easily.

Any time you send a print/model to an outside vendor, you run the risk of it leaking or being used without permission. As far as the relative risk, I know that the smaller shops are quoting and programming these by hand. I also know that, in general, the automated shops do not have humans looking at things when they quote them; it's automated.

I also know that at most of the small shops I've seen, It would be very easy for a programmer/operator to run a few extra parts if they so desired.

Why do you think that a large, automated, low-touch service is higher risk than a traditional shop?

Click to expand...

Because you have your local shop agree to/sign a NDA, and being local, word get's around if they are sending your design "out the back door".

steve-l said:

Exactly why using the cloud for your data is fraught with risk. Once your IP leaves your possession, it is essentially public and no longer yours.

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That is so far away from actuality that it's crazy... I can see the argument that the cloud service provider lays some claim to your data, but to claim that using a cloud service provider is akin to making it 'essentially public' is very very silly.

I don't disagree that having someone else store your data has some level of risk. The risk of data loss is very low as modern cloud services are designed to be very resilient. The risk of someone hacking your account or the data provider changing terms to hold your data hostage is greater than zero though for sure.

However I would still say the risk involved with a cloud provider is much lower than the overall risk of data loss if you were to store the data yourself. I have personally seen data loss incidents a few times, even in workplaces where solid on-site/off-site backup systems were in place. The most recent of which involved a member of the cleaning staff accidentally pulling the plug on the simple rack that contained the NAS which housed the on-site backups. The on-site NAS was rotated out to an off-site location every two weeks. It just happened to be right before the rotation and the NAS was corrupted by the power loss. A user's machine containing important data lost it's hard-drive the same day and two weeks of data was lost.

This setup was fairly simple but was still one of the more serious on-site backups systems that I've actually seen a business implement. Most places will ask "what's a backup?" or they think that keeping a single on-site backup counts as 'good enough'. Don't ask what the plan is if the building burns down...

Unless you or an IT professional setup close to real time offsite backups then I would say on balance the risks in storing your data locally are much higher than storing it using a cloud service provider, assuming you have strong unique passwords.

Let's not talk about how most likely your offsite backups will be implemented using a cloud service and will in the end expose you to the same risks anyway. I don't see too many machine shops or industrial design houses buying rack space in an offsite data-center and administering their own remote NAS...

Another example of the PC not only puting man out of work, but puting a bigger margin between the Have's and Have Not's.


I was borned 30 yrs too late...



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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

Ox said:

Another example of the PC not only puting man out of work, but puting a bigger margin between the Have's and Have Not's

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Yeah I don't disagree with you there Ox. I think that the push toward eliminating make-work jobs is a good thing, but we need to work out how to make sure the people put out of work are still looked after... There will come a time where there simply isn't need for everyone to work, right now we don't have an equitable way to deal with that situation.