Ponoko a-go-go

This week I received my first order back from Ponoko. If you are interested in making things and you haven’t heard of them, you should really check them out – it’s a company based in New Zealand that allows you to upload either a vector graphic file or a photo of something you’ve designed and have it laser-cut and etched into any one of a number of possible materials.

I was prototyping a number of jewelry items and keychains, as well as some other things, largely to test out the service and see if it will work as well for Polymath Design Lab as I think it will. I created one file to be cut in wood (beech plywood) and one to be cut in acrylic. Just about everything I tried in wood worked beautifully. The acrylic was a bit more hit and miss, but I still ended up with some great pieces, and definitely learned about what I did and didn’t like on it, which was the primary goal.

One of my favorite things about the company was the transparency of their process. They update you on every step of the way – going so far as to provide an RSS feed you can subscribe to updating you on the status of your project. I also have checked out their forums and noticed that they are quick to help anyone who has a question or is running into difficulties with the process.

I’m already working on my next order from them, which will include more copies (some with slight tweaks) of a number of the designs I had created in the wood, and a test run with bamboo, a new material they just added to their catalog within the last week or so. You can expect to see some of the wood items from my second order (and possibly some of the bamboo as well, depending on how it turns out), up in my etsy shop in a few weeks.