Manufacturing service · Founded in 2013
RapidRealities
Co-founder & CEO · April 2013–August 2016
Quoting machined parts from 3D files
In 2013, I co-founded RapidRealities to pair fast part quoting from uploaded 3D CAD files with open capacity at partner machine shops. Hardware customers could upload a design, receive a quote, and have their job routed to a shop with spindle time available—turning pricing a part and finding a qualified shop into one service while helping shops fill idle machine hours.
I developed the two-sided business model and directed our software developers and manufacturing partner in building the customer website and quoting portal.
Enlarge imageEnlarge: Quoting CNC-machined parts required weighing raw stock, workholding setups, and drawing tolerances alongside 3D geometry.A manufacturing service beyond our own printers
Running Ingenovations, the 3D-printing service inside RTSystemDesign, exposed a recurring bottleneck: we could help a client refine a part in CAD, yet plastic printing wasn’t always the right process to make it. Many jobs needed CNC machining or sheet-metal fabrication beyond the printers we owned in-house.
Spinning out RapidRealities let customers start with the part, material, and deadline they actually needed—extending from 3D printing into CNC machining with plans for a broader sheet-metal and fabrication network—instead of limiting them to equipment sitting under our own roof.
Rapid quotes backed by real manufacturing judgment
Unlike 3D printing, quoting a machined metal part takes more than reading volume from a 3D file: an estimator has to account for raw stock, workholding setups, CAM programming, machine cycle time, and tolerances called out on 2D drawings.
Working closely with our manufacturing partner and software developers, I directed a portal that brought the 3D model, engineering drawings, quantity, and target delivery date together in one workspace for rapid machinist review, while mapping clear customer and staff handoffs as quotes converted into live orders—delivering fast quoting and shop matching in operation while treating fully automated pricing and multi-shop scheduling as longer-term roadmap goals.
Experience used here
Company building · Product strategy · Manufacturing services · Quotation tools · Capacity matching · Software-development direction