Has anyone used Xometry or similar services to make parts?
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I had a coworker use it recently for some CNC milling. It seemed to work out okay for him. They beat the rates and significantly beat the lead time of some local machine shops he was using before
Their quote system is pretty convenient. I believe it is set up to give you an instant quote.
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We haven’t used xometry to make parts, but we have used xometry supplies from time to time to get stock, and it’s pretty competitively priced.
I’ve used it on occasion. Yep, the quote is near-instant. (As opposed to shopping the one-off part around to a bunch of other places…) Lead time is pretty low, and can get lower if you want to rush it.
That said, it can be kind of expensive for FRC purposes.
I’ve also looked at ProtoLabs. For the part I was looking at (and had both quote), ProtoLabs couldn’t do it in the material I wanted (their machine envelope wasn’t big enough–“you can do aluminum that size but not steel???” sums up my reaction) and Xometry was able to do it easily. The next part I looked at went straight to Xometry.
One tip: Order >1 of any given part. The per-part cost will go way down.
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We used sendcutsend.com Found their prices to be surprisingly good (especially since they include shipping), turnaround quick and quality excellent. 10/10.
Word of caution: It looks like they’re a laser-only shop. The other shops noted have more service types.
For folks in my area I’d just send them to one of the local shops for both their raw material and their laser cut/waterjet; said shop doesn’t do shipping beyond the local area or I’d link their site.
We’ve used them a bunch for work. No specific complaints, but also can’t really give any praise. We requested orbital sanding on some parts and they just shipped them without cleaning off the aluminum powder. More variance in quality than a regular shop (of course, their whole shtick is being different shops) and no more or fewer issues than a regular shop.
They finally naively accept SolidWorks 2020 files, which we definitely grumbled for a bit over.
You’re also probably not going to get a sponsorship from them, compared to your friendly neighborhood shop.
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I have used them a couple times. I highly recommend them. They have always been honest with me when any issues come up, especially with delays in manufacturing.
I had them make a couple of large, 10 inch diameter titanium wheel hubs pictured below. Their auto quoting system underbid the part by a significant amount but they still honored the quote as is. They were very up front with me when they quite understandably, could not meet the quoted 2 week lead time for these parts and did everything they could to get them to us quickly.
They made sure to pick a shop they knew could pull these parts off without any mistakes and had them working weekends to make these parts. Their website now requires manual quoting for large parts in exotic materials because of this issue.
I also had them make about 50 small aluminum parts for the same project and those arrived 9 days after placing the order. I was very impressed with the lead time. We also use Protolabs a ton but their tolerances, even with their tight tolerance shop, Rapid is not usually tight enough to allow us to use parts without post machining. Xometry will basically do anything you ask them to do, they will go down to +/- .001" in the auto quote, but will go tighter if you request it. They also will do post processing like anodizing or powder coating which makes them a great one stop shop. But like others said it is probably on the expensive side for FRC.
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Has anyone used Xometry’s new 2D technical drawing marketplace? Looks like you can now get quotes from 2D files: https://www.xometry.com/manufacturing/technical-drawing-rfq
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