4 ms·

Fabsie hopes to help the mass market enjoy the fruits of the DIY movement

20 points by jamesmcbennett 14y ago

startgroundUP 14y ago
so we get to download furniture for free?
- jamesmcbennett 14y ago
  So i've made this stool rocks file available for free. (Creative Commons - non-commercial) http://fabsie.com/store/this-stool-rocks/ http://fabsie.com/store/this-stool-rocks/ So far a school in alberta, canada are making it and a guy in Sweden as they sent photos. Will add more files to free download for laser cutting smaller models. Depending on designer preferences, when someone sends me a design, I will ask what license they prefer suggesting CC NC.
  - jamesmcbennett 14y ago
    Will be making tables and lots of other things availble soon. Trying to get Techstars a table now. Business Model Get wood sent to you cut - no hassle - Paid. Get a file to download - know what you are doing - Free
28bcat 14y ago
Pifflesnort - can't argue with the fact that economies of scale make mass-produced furniture cheaper to produce and therefore cheaper to buy. Obviously for some people, cost will always be the primary factor when it comes to deciding what they purchase. However, as far as I understand it, low cost isn't really the USP here. Maybe someone will correct me on this, but i'd say that the more important factors are a) the environmental benefits of local production, and b) the potential for customisation. I think there's definitely a market for locally manufactured, non-air freighted furniture. People are willing to pay slightly more than they would at a supermarket in order to buy locally produced vegetables at a farmers' market, and the same group of people might well be attracted to the idea of buying locally produced furniture, even if they have to pay slightly more for it than they would do at IKEA - particularly if what they end up with is a unique piece of furniture that exactly fits the dimensions of the space they want to put it in.
purplenath 14y ago
This is awesome! All for the longtail! There's definitely a shortage of machinist skills out there at the moment but it's services like this that'll get groups of young people interested in learning those skills again.
- jamesmcbennett 14y ago
  Hope so!
pifflesnort 14y ago
There are a lot of market issues with this; I just don't see this working. It's not as if CNC and automation processes are new to the furniture industry, especially for small-scale furniture makers. Even once you automate a good deal of the production costs, there is still additional labor, materials, and expertise required. First of all, CNC machined plywood is not sufficient for anything other than workshop-grade furniture (as in, furniture you'd use in your workshop). You need -- at a minimum: - Edging applied to protect against splinters and damage to the veneer. - A finish/varnish/veneer to protect the surfaces against damage/dirt/warping. Those things involve additional semi-skilled labor and cost. On top of that, people don't usually want raw wood furniture, which means that you need different kinds of veneers and surfaces, which increases material costs and complexity. On top of that, you're unlikely to be able to produce purely "slot constructed" furniture of any appreciable complexity. You're going to need joints. This significantly increases the costs of the machinery/tooling/design required. Now that you've added additional materials, labor, and more complex end-user construction, your costs have gone up as well. On top of this, your production facilities need to figure out how to efficiently ship these one-off flat-pack low-end creations to your end users. Congratulations, you're competing with Ikea, and Ikea has the cheap flat-pack mass-production process down to a science. If you start trying to scale up to more high-end furniture production, you now have more problems. First of all, what's described here is essentially already how furniture (and clothing, and electronics) production works, just without the "crowd sourcing". Designers, production facilities, and brand management companies come together to produce furniture for sale in retail outlets. The problem is that each entity in the chain (design -> production -> sale) does a lot more than operate automated machinery. The machinery itself is not the major expense. The trained labor, raw materials, stock, distribution, storage, and sale of the products are where the complexity come in. The place where you find efficiencies is in either doing this at scale, not doing this one-off. When you order a piece of furniture from a high-end company, it will be dropped into the production queue, shipped via freight some time later along with a huge batch of other furniture, distributed to large warehouses near major cities, and then pushed out to a subcontracted or directly managed furniture freight delivery service. Trying to do this on a non-local, distributed, crowd-source bases via UPS will not be cheaper. The only way to do this for an equivalent price is to buy furniture made, designed, and often delivered by local furniture makers. They tend to have their own workshops containing things like CNC machines, or already have access to those machines through shared workshops. Insofar as they require less skilled labor to assemble the work, they already have it.
jamesmcbennett 14y ago
10 Chairs we like made using digital CNC routers. http://fabsie.com/blog/ten-of-our-favourite-digitally-cut-furniture-design/ http://fabsie.com/blog/ten-of-our-favourite-digitally-cut-fu...
ph0rque 14y ago
James... I'm assuming you can get eventually get a design flat-packed and shipped with Fabsie?
- jamesmcbennett 14y ago
  So the aim would be to order a product on www.fabsie.com that will be cut locally (in North Carolina for example if thats where you are and available for collection or delivery.
joshayto 14y ago
What I find interesting is the possibilities of this manufacturing process really expanding and changing other industries. Is it really worth the environmental cost to ship a product half way around the world, to save a few pence? Why not just make it locally, if we can, even if it costs a tiny a bit more. I see a big shift going forward, hopefully... As they say: It's easier to mail the recipe, than a cake.

so we get to download furniture for free?

jamesmcbennett 14y ago
So i've made this stool rocks file available for free. (Creative Commons - non-commercial) http://fabsie.com/store/this-stool-rocks/ http://fabsie.com/store/this-stool-rocks/ So far a school in alberta, canada are making it and a guy in Sweden as they sent photos. Will add more files to free download for laser cutting smaller models. Depending on designer preferences, when someone sends me a design, I will ask what license they prefer suggesting CC NC.
- jamesmcbennett 14y ago
  Will be making tables and lots of other things availble soon. Trying to get Techstars a table now. Business Model Get wood sent to you cut - no hassle - Paid. Get a file to download - know what you are doing - Free

Pifflesnort - can't argue with the fact that economies of scale make mass-produced furniture cheaper to produce and therefore cheaper to buy. Obviously for some people, cost will always be the primary factor when it comes to deciding what they purchase. However, as far as I understand it, low cost isn't really the USP here. Maybe someone will correct me on this, but i'd say that the more important factors are a) the environmental benefits of local production, and b) the potential for customisation. I think there's definitely a market for locally manufactured, non-air freighted furniture. People are willing to pay slightly more than they would at a supermarket in order to buy locally produced vegetables at a farmers' market, and the same group of people might well be attracted to the idea of buying locally produced furniture, even if they have to pay slightly more for it than they would do at IKEA - particularly if what they end up with is a unique piece of furniture that exactly fits the dimensions of the space they want to put it in.

purplenath 14y ago

This is awesome! All for the longtail! There's definitely a shortage of machinist skills out there at the moment but it's services like this that'll get groups of young people interested in learning those skills again.

jamesmcbennett 14y ago
Hope so!

pifflesnort 14y ago

There are a lot of market issues with this; I just don't see this working. It's not as if CNC and automation processes are new to the furniture industry, especially for small-scale furniture makers. Even once you automate a good deal of the production costs, there is still additional labor, materials, and expertise required. First of all, CNC machined plywood is not sufficient for anything other than workshop-grade furniture (as in, furniture you'd use in your workshop). You need -- at a minimum: - Edging applied to protect against splinters and damage to the veneer. - A finish/varnish/veneer to protect the surfaces against damage/dirt/warping. Those things involve additional semi-skilled labor and cost. On top of that, people don't usually want raw wood furniture, which means that you need different kinds of veneers and surfaces, which increases material costs and complexity. On top of that, you're unlikely to be able to produce purely "slot constructed" furniture of any appreciable complexity. You're going to need joints. This significantly increases the costs of the machinery/tooling/design required. Now that you've added additional materials, labor, and more complex end-user construction, your costs have gone up as well. On top of this, your production facilities need to figure out how to efficiently ship these one-off flat-pack low-end creations to your end users. Congratulations, you're competing with Ikea, and Ikea has the cheap flat-pack mass-production process down to a science. If you start trying to scale up to more high-end furniture production, you now have more problems. First of all, what's described here is essentially already how furniture (and clothing, and electronics) production works, just without the "crowd sourcing". Designers, production facilities, and brand management companies come together to produce furniture for sale in retail outlets. The problem is that each entity in the chain (design -> production -> sale) does a lot more than operate automated machinery. The machinery itself is not the major expense. The trained labor, raw materials, stock, distribution, storage, and sale of the products are where the complexity come in. The place where you find efficiencies is in either doing this at scale, not doing this one-off. When you order a piece of furniture from a high-end company, it will be dropped into the production queue, shipped via freight some time later along with a huge batch of other furniture, distributed to large warehouses near major cities, and then pushed out to a subcontracted or directly managed furniture freight delivery service. Trying to do this on a non-local, distributed, crowd-source bases via UPS will not be cheaper. The only way to do this for an equivalent price is to buy furniture made, designed, and often delivered by local furniture makers. They tend to have their own workshops containing things like CNC machines, or already have access to those machines through shared workshops. Insofar as they require less skilled labor to assemble the work, they already have it.

jamesmcbennett 14y ago

10 Chairs we like made using digital CNC routers. http://fabsie.com/blog/ten-of-our-favourite-digitally-cut-furniture-design/ http://fabsie.com/blog/ten-of-our-favourite-digitally-cut-fu...

ph0rque 14y ago

James... I'm assuming you can get eventually get a design flat-packed and shipped with Fabsie?

jamesmcbennett 14y ago
So the aim would be to order a product on www.fabsie.com that will be cut locally (in North Carolina for example if thats where you are and available for collection or delivery.

joshayto 14y ago

What I find interesting is the possibilities of this manufacturing process really expanding and changing other industries. Is it really worth the environmental cost to ship a product half way around the world, to save a few pence? Why not just make it locally, if we can, even if it costs a tiny a bit more. I see a big shift going forward, hopefully... As they say: It's easier to mail the recipe, than a cake.