Hi All,
My team builds a lot of stuff from scratch, but we get busy and sometimes need an overflow outlet. Does anyone have a good contract for a company or individual who can build simple prototype devices? These are not anything that would be produced or marketed en masse, and generally not super complicated.
Thanks,
Rob
What kind of devices? Your request could not possibly be any more vague. I doubt the place where we go to get stuff 3-D printed would be the same place you go for small electronics and sensors and neither of those would be the same place you would go for machined parts.
When you say, “prototype devices” I’m sure you have some image in your head that narrows that down. But to those of us here that’s a pretty big range of things.
I mean small electro-mechanical devices, that would require 3D printed parts, sensors and machined components.
Let’s say for example: a precision controlled temperature tube rack or level sensors for a series of reagent and waste bottles. The types of small devices that lab automation people design and build all the time when there is no commercial solution available. Prototype devices that require working knowledge of CAD, fabrication, electronics, mechanics, software - but not to the level of a EE designing circuit boards for consumer electronics devices.
Many of us build these things all the time - but I’m curious if there are any companies or individuals who take this on as contract work.
My team has worked with Todaro Robotics (https://todarorobotics.com/) before and they have been willing to help with projects large and small. They were great partners. Reach out to them and see if they can do what you need!
We’ve also worked with V&P Scientific to do some costume designs that worked out well (https://vp-sci.com/).
we handle these kind of bespoke engineering/design projects all the time,
DM me & we can chat about your specific needs
thanks,
Daniel
Well I’m between projects and I have Cad, resin and filament 3d printers, a CNC mill and a lot of experience in this area…what are you looking for? You can reach out to me at Sam@tbd.fyi.
Thanks everyone. I have a route figured out for my current project. But I’m happy to hear that there are options out there, it’s useful to have a list of contacts. I’ll reach out when the next project comes up.
The is a UK based company called automated technologies who specialise in prototyping.
Automated Technologies Ltd Manchester UK, designer and developer of all things automated
At Lab Sync, we’re working on productizing these exact types of things that we’ve ended up needing over and over at different companies in our careers in lab automation, so people can just buy them off-the-shelf. Some examples:
The sensors are all queryable via OpenAPI from within a workflow for closed-loop decision making, and also (optionally) automatically record to a database where you can use our dashboards user interface for viewing historical trends (and give access to your Machine Learning teams to analyze with anomaly detection algorithms). All the sensors are plug-and-play USB devices (no worrying about what COM port or IP address it’s at, you just query it using its unique serial ID in the driver API).
We don’t have official marketing materials up on our website yet, but if you’re interested, let me know and I can get you more details. I could potentially also arrange a discussion with one of our current customers using the sensors, but no promises 
My name is John. I was at V&P Scientific for many years and managed the majority of custom solutions. I have since started my own custom solutions company, DexGen. If you’re interested, please let me know and we can discuss your project. We have just finished a new mixing device called the DexStir. See here: DexStir – DexGen
