Fabnami Features New Release for 3D Print Bureau Clients

Fabnami, a combination of the words fabrication and tsunami, is a fitting name to describe this company’s aspirations. This innovative little tidal wave is a cloud-based e-commerce website solution for 3D print bureaus. As with all areas of commerce, there are the big dogs who have everything at their fingertips, and then there are the smaller shops who need more support in fleshing out their business solutions. They require another level of assistance, which Fabnami is designed to provide, offering:

• 3D interactive visualization
• Browser-based real time manufacturability checks
• Visual model defect highlighting
• Support material optimization
• Price quotes
• Shopping list generation
• Checkout
• Payment

Geared toward the smaller to medium-sized printing bureaus, Fabnami is built on the idea that many new businesses lack the funds to purchase or maintain 3D printing equipment, as well as create their own e-commerce websites. Pointing out that most of the established printing services, such as Materialise or Shapeways, deal with more high-end business. Fabnami, relatively new itself, takes pride in providing their new users and innovators with accessibility and an open ear to what they do and don’t like about the Fabnami services.

“Being a startup, we tend to like the interaction with small companies and innovators. Some are using Fabnami for a small, nominal fee or for free but provide us with very valuable feedback and suggestions,” says Alessandro Usseglio Viretta, Fabnami’s founder “We also started approaching large companies, in particular fast-growing 3D printer manufacturers. Our goal is to help them provide to their clients turn-key online 3D-print-bureau packages that include hardware, software, website and back-office solutions. Eventually, these projects might evolve into a full-featured franchising.”

Recently, in keeping with their hands-on approach to listening to their customers, they announced new features to their online services, including:

• Smoother user experience from beginning to end
• End-to-end data encryption
• Localization of e-shop in any language
• Javascript expressions for checking products and pricing
• Integration of Citrix Posio for order management
• Selection of measurement units
• Automatic invoice generation
• Personalized invoices
• PayPal
• Multi-currency support
• Fault-tolerance architecture
• Complete transaction audit-track

Touting their services as “no hassle,” and user-friendly, Fabnami can walk anyone through the process of getting their e-shop set up–as well as taking customers from start to finish in a streamlined fashion.

Fabnami was both created and designed by Alessandro Viretta, who has a PhD in Computational Neuroscience from ETH Zurich, and “several years experience in software development.” Viretta went on to develop what has certainly become more than a passing fancy in the 3D printing industry.

“I worked hard on this software to improve its performance in terms of model analysis accuracy and price calculation speed. Fabnami is presently the most sophisticated solution on the market and its targeted to newly=founded 3-D-print bureaus, as well as established ones that want to tap new market segments and streamline their processes.”

With companies like Fabnami, the 3D printing industry should be adding a whole new angle to commerce–opening a new window for business ideas and opportunities for 3D printing enthusiasts and companies looking to get into the market. Says Viretta, “We need to make the complexity of this technology disappear, and Fabnami wants to be the missing button to make it happen.”

Are you thinking of starting your own 3D printing and design company? What do you see as the challenges for a startup in this business? Join the conversation in the Fabnami forum thread on 3DPB.com.