I sell cabinet knobs through my site knobs.co. I'm interested in submitting designs that can be printed at Shapeways and then the finished products shipped directly to my customers. The problem is that the threading for the screws is not something that can be done to the necessary degree of accuracy at Shapeways. I need that to be done somehow in post-production, but I'm not equipped to do it myself. Does anyone have any suggestions of how we can go about doing that? Can that be done by Shapeways? Are there other vendors that the products could be shipped to for post-production? Thanks so much, Dave
I doubt that shapeways will want to do the drilling - individualized post-processing is quite diametral to their business model of streamlined, high-throughput printing. Unless you plan to offer your cabinet knobs in one of the expensive cast metals, it may be safer anyway to sell already printed parts through your own website rather than exposing your end customer to the inevitable variations that come from print orientation (stepping/print lines) and in the case of the "steel" materials also from random diffusion of the bronze filler.
Assuming you'll be printing in plastics, predominantly, you may wish to consider pressing in threaded metal inserts. They are readily available and the manufacturers will already have recommendations for hole size. You may need to do a little bit of testing to get your prints to the exact hole size you need, but it should be a small matter.