cranialdivot

I have had a large professionally equipped CNC shop in my home shop for a long time as well with a similar array of equipment you mention. I use it intensively for product development for my own company and others. I also have an equally electronics fab lab and a range of other work centers. I have also been programming since CP/M days, but I hate coding, so whatever. I do my own injection molds, boards, as well.

I've taught a number of people to use 3-axis CNC equipment more or less safely if not capably in several evenings, including Solidworks introductions. I don't have patience for people telling me how hard it is to learn to use machinery well.

I have less patience for the guild system. It takes something pretty straight forward and whines about how hard things are to keep prices high.

The best tools for learning to make your own electronics, machined parts, code, and actual products is the right attitude, some intelligence, and the right tools that don't require months of intense tolerance to bad tool design that require you to have months of knowledge to make basic models or parts. It takes a while to learn to machine well, but not years for crying out loud.

Rather than expounding on all this experience you have and all the effort and blood and sweat and tears it took you to gain those skills, it might be better to acknowledge that a lot of the hurdles are bad systems. Myself and a lot of other people have gained these skills with a lot less frustration than perhaps many others. There are a lot of smart people out there. They don't need Proto labs. They won't need this offering really, either. But some will, and a broader swath of the product development public will have greater access to more options with good free CAD, automated post processing, or better/easier PC layout tools.

The app kiddies aren't going to take the manufacturing world by storm. But the guilds are basically watching themselves get eaten alive, and that is a good thing. Let product developers do this stuff themselves. The mythology of it being so hard is a fantasy, and a lot of people are starting to realize it. Any young ME who doesn't have strong EE chops and vic versa already has a harder time making a career these days, and frankly, any engineer without strong fab skills now is definitely less valuable.