Designing and Manufacturing with Sheet Acrylic

Expensive plastic molds got you down?
We have the solution.
3D Printing and Injection molding aren’t the only ways to create a custom enclosure. 3D printing is slow, and injection molding is expensive.
Learn to manufacture using acrylic sheets.
Acrylics come in a variety of sizes and colors. Manufacturing with it is easy, cheap, and ends up looking great.

BENEFITS OF ACRYLIC SHEET MANUFACTURING

• No upfront expensive mold cost
• Lower minimum quantity orders (think 1,000 instead of 1,000,000)
• Iterate on your design quickly and easily, even after the first production run

This 3-hour workshop covers:

• ​Design for manufacturing
• Manufacturing techniques
• Contacts for local prototyping
• Q&A with overseas contract manufacturer (CM)

DESIGN FOR MANUFACTURING
Unless you plan to build your enclosures one-by-one, you need to know a few things before handing the design over to a manufacturer. We’ll show you the common mistakes and the key things you need to do.

MANUFACTURING TECHNIQUES
Learn the basic techniques used for manufacturing with acrylic. You’ll see how joints, bends, and cuts can be used to create shapes and design features.

CONTACTS FOR LOCAL PROTOTYPING
Leverage our experience with both working locally and moving designs overseas. Understand how to work with a local shop and get introduced to contacts that can help you today.

Q&A WITH CONTRACT MANUFACTURER
Have you ever heard of TV-B-Gone and Makey Makey? We’ll have 30 minutes with a China-based contract manufacturer with those projects (and many more.) They’ll give us 30 minutes to answer your questions about the manufacturing process.

WHO IS THIS WORKSHOP FOR?
Whether you are thinking about a product’s enclosure or you are actively trying to build a product. This workshop will teach you about a lesser known alternative to 3d printing and injection molding.
Also, anyone not familiar with the manufacturing process will benefit from the instructor’s experience.

ABOUT RIK LEE LEIPOLD
Rik Lee Leipold is the former lead fabricator for Tap Plastics in San Francisco. He is always working on projects, from solvent-welded prototypes in acrylic, to vintage Corvette headlight lenses using PETG. He has a wide range of expertise in plastic molding, casting, shaping and bending.

ABOUT RUTH GRACE WONG
Ruth is a site reliability engineer by day and maker by night. Check out her manufacturing related articles on Medium, including this recent one about Aqua Design Innovations, who manufactures with sheet acrylic in production (and has ordered prototypes from Ruth and Rik): https://medium.com/supplyframe-hardware/the-100-000-mistake-ff72a0cdf1a1

LOGISTICS
​3 Hour Workshop
$85 per person: Pay via Meetup.com
We will honor the old price of $75 for one week until Wednesday September 26
Location: Noisebridge, San Francisco
May 5th, 2018. 9:30a -12:30p