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About Proto Labs
Proto Labs is a leading online and technology-enabled quick-turn manufacturer of custom parts for prototyping and short-run production with facilities around the world. Our two services, Firstcut CNC machining and Protomold injection molding use proprietary software and advanced manufacturing methods to deliver parts in as fast as one day, helping designers get their products to market faster than their competition. Our interactive quote system allows designers and engineers to upload 3D CAD files, get moldability and machinability analysis, compare pricing, change specifications, and place orders directly online.
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About
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Brief Overview
Proto Labs is the world’s fastest provider of CNC machined and injection molded parts. Our Firstcut and Protomold services utilize proprietary computing technologies and automated manufacturing systems to provide both prototype and short-run production parts.
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Corporate History
Proto Labs, Inc. began in 1999 as The Protomold Company, Inc. which specialized in the quick-turn manufacture of custom plastic injection molded parts. Our Protomold injection molding service is perfect for low to mid-volume production, bridge tooling, and prototyping parts. We work with advanced aluminum alloys, high-speed CNC machining, and none of the costly and time consuming custom engineering that normally goes into the development of injection mold tooling. In 2005 we expanded to Europe with the creation of Protomold Ltd. in Telford, England which now serves all of the EU countries with sales offices in Germany and France.
In 2007, the company introduced the Firstcut quick-turn CNC machining service. It’s great for functional prototypes in very small quantities or custom one-off projects, such as jigs or fixtures; there is never any up-front NRE cost. We are as happy to make 1 part as 10 or 100. We can currently do 3-axis milling from up to six sides of the part to machine as many features as possible.
By 2009, we began operating both our Protomold and Firstcut services under our corporate name, Proto Labs, Inc. We opened Proto Labs Japan in 2009 to provide both services to Japanese design engineers.
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What We Do
Our single focus is to provide new product designers with the easiest, fastest and least-expensive way to obtain low volumes of parts based on their 3D CAD design. Our Firstcut CNC machining service supports an array of engineering-grade resins as well and metals, and our Protomold plastic injection molding service offers hundreds of material choices to designers. This capability is applicable to all markets, including but not limited to medical devices, electronics, appliance, automotive and consumer products.
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How We Do It
Proto Labs has radically changed the economics and lead times associated with obtaining CNC machined or injection molded parts. We routinely ship parts to design engineers before they can even get quotes from conventional suppliers, sometimes as fast as the next business day.
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We can do this because we have automated the manual processes normally associated with mold design and toolpath generation through the use of proprietary software running on a compute cluster at over 2 trillion floating point operations per second. Our ProtoQuote® and FirstQuote® systems are interactive and provide free manufacturability analysis based on the 3D CAD information provided by the customer. And we do all of this in-house, with the scale that is required to support the largest projects.
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