Suspect this will become a way bigger deal as people start doing more projects and putting them out there.
I reckon a lot of people *avoid* designing stuff in this way because they haven't seen CNC tube bending done well.
CNC tube bending is awesome, but I have to be honest: it has been our slowest-growing service to-date. A little over a year in, and we are doing just $20k / month. Basically zero compared to our top line, and that's after spending more than $1 million on in-house software and equipment to get it going. Meanwhile, it absolutely eats up warehouse space.
Reasons:
- Extremely niche, few people design with it
- Extremely wide needs for tube profile and tooling support - hard to meet every need
- Unique design and tolerance challenges
- High equipment costs, changeover costs, and high square footage makes getting feature diversity extremely expensive and difficult
But we are committed. Long-term, it'll be a win. It's such a cool, efficient way to build things, but people don't, because it has always been almost impossible to buy.