Ponoko Online Furniture Manufacturing: If You Dream It, They Can Build It
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA 
on 07.16.07
TreeHugger has mentioned the concept of downloadable design many a time before, with good reason. It's a great way to localize product manufacturing and cut down the distance and time (and carbon footprint) of everything needs to get to you. Unfortunately, to this point, a lot of the downloadable designs have been pretty small and simple; because we're limited to printing on a flat piece of paper, it's tough to make something like a (full-size) chair or table. For everyone else who doesn't have a workshop of their own, there's Ponoko. The New Zealand-based company helps you upload your own digital design, find a local manufacturer to create it and then send it back to you. Burgeoning designers can also submit and then sell their designs to other Ponoko users, who then in turn have it manufactured locally to them. The system is still in beta, so we aren't sure how everything works, but it's a terrifically intriguing idea and seems to be a great way to put design within reach of everyone and give furniture design a little open-source twist. If you've got some designs ready to unleash on the world, sign up to help them test, check out some examples in their blog and stay tuned for more. ::Ponoko via ::Core77
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Eat a Vegetarian Diet, Reduce Your Carbon Footprint by a Ton
- French Pressed Coffee: A Surprisingly Green Luxury, On the Cheap
- Don't be Like Gov. Mark Sanford—Travel Local
- We Love 5min.com for Simple DIY Solutions
- Mister Miyagi's Guide to Going Green: 5 Questions to Always Ask to Think Green and Be Green
- Quickly Calculate The Carbon of Your Flights
Cheers for the article Colin. The exciting prospect of this is that the Ponoko concept isn't limited to furniture design - but is unlimited to the design of anything, with potentially any material available on the market. At the moment, as we work with our systems and the fabbers available, we are working only with various woods and plastics - but the future is pretty much endless. This not only opens up a whole new world of accessible prototyping (at present, prototyping designs are too time consuming and expensive for many to consider getting their design off the ground) but also creativity and invention. Ponoko connects the designer to desktop manufacturing software such as www.desktopfactory.com and www.ulsinc.com, which alows people to create without any physical restraints. And then links this to fabber machines that produce their creations. This is not to say that every creation will be a hit first off - but is an amazing platform for creativity to really thrive, and prototyping to develop into an end piece that is great. Without the distribution costs etc attached to it! I believe Ponoko opens up a whole new world of ‘potential genius designs’ - that are not just functional for the one-user, or just look good - but can actually provide a huge end benefit to a community, a town or even a nation and more. When someone asks ‘what will a person be able to design and build through Ponoko?"- I think - ‘how far does your imagination stretch’. As I believe that’s what design combined with digital manufacturing hardaware is going to give us - unlimited imagination, with no necessary requirement for a degree in design or engineering for the end product. It’s pretty exciting stuff - and Ponoko can’t wait for the next hurdle to jump over and see what’s on the other side! What we do encourage is for any present or budding designer, crafter, inventor or the like to log on and sign up for our open beta, which will happen in a few months. So they too can become part of that next hurdle! Cheers, Nic Ponoko. www.ponoko.com
This is really GREAT!
Our team is constructing a website like but not the same as Ponoko, we have some other ideas..:)