design-for-manufacturing
(5)
KEYDESIGN Makes the Case for Fewer Parts
A two-piece wallet case. A thermometer without a charging sled. Three generations of checkout hardware. Inside the industrial design studio that treats everyday friction as a design brief.
Design Catapult takes the sketch all the way to the shipping box
A hospital cart, a contamination scanner and a cold-brew machine have something in common: Design Catapult. The California firm makes a business of the difficult distance between a clever idea and a product someone can actually use.
Fictiv Built a $350 Million Business Out of the Wait for Parts
Two brothers started with a 3D printer in a San Francisco kitchen. Now part of MISUMI, Fictiv is taking on the expensive stretch between a finished design and a finished product.
The 70-Day Hardware Sprint: Motivo Built a Company for the Projects Everyone Else Calls Impossible
Motivo puts mechanical engineers, coders and fabricators under one roof, then hands them the sort of brief that makes a normal vendor ask for another quarter. Its real product is not a robot, tractor or aircraft part - it is a faster way to make hard technology real.
Prototyping.io
Prototyping.io is a San Francisco startup (YC Spring 2026) building an AI-native manufacturing platform that turns CAD designs into finished mechanical parts in as little as one day. It automates the traditionally manual path from design to production - DFM analysis, sourcing, process planning, machine programming and setups - so hardware teams can iterate in days instead of weeks. The company serves customers from early-stage startups to multi-billion-dollar enterprises across robotics, AI infrastructure, energy, automotive and defense.