so the productized lanes @OSHBuilt wrote about last week have a 28-year history. i did a bit of digging this week. here's what each one said NO to: > protomold, 1999: anything that wasn’t a two-part aluminum mold > quickparts, 2000: no quote without a file, and they patented that > osh park, 2009: one purple stackup, $5 a square inch > rapid sheet metal, 2013: no prints, 3d files only (sold for $120m) > sendcutsend, 2018: no prints, 44 by 30 inches max > osh cut, 2018: same price for everyone, no negotiation > fabworks, 2023: metals only > digital metal, 2025: no tooling, castings from a printed tree > finalrev, 2025: step files only, same day > twentyfour26, 2026: one part size, 6061 > phoenix heat treating, 2026: in testing there are more for sure, but many didn’t survive (plethora, tempo, fast radius, shapeways), mostly because they said YES to everything. but yeah, this is a long one. give it a read over the weekend and let me know who i forgot or got wrong.

the small machine shop is stuck under $3 million. it’s stuck because of who it works for and on what terms.

i think the job data in a shop is worth more now than a single machine on the floor. ai labs are emailing shops asking for it, and xometry already prices its jobs off it. but no bank will lend you a dollar against it, so you have to build it yourself. own it. the processes, the data collection, the insights, the back and front office, at the shop level. that's table stakes now if you plan to survive (thrive?) the next 10 years. exciting times. truly.