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The workshop

Karmarc is a design and additive manufacturing workshop in Valencia, Spain. It exists to solve the parts a company or a private customer needs and cannot buy ready-made: because they don’t exist, because they are no longer manufactured, because the manufacturer only sells them inside a complete assembly, or because the ones available don’t quite fit where they have to go.

The right part isn’t always the one you can buy.

A standard part is designed for the general case. It works almost always, and when it doesn’t, the usual answer is to adapt the assembly, bodge it or replace the whole unit. We prefer the other route: design the part that solves that particular case and make it in a material that will withstand what it has to withstand.

What that means in practice

The work starts by measuring, not by printing. Before drawing anything we need to understand what the part does, where it is fitted and what it is subjected to. When an original exists it is measured with calipers, even if it arrives broken. When it doesn’t, we start from the space it has to occupy.

  • The material is chosen for what it has to withstand, not for what is most convenient to print. A lid taken off by hand is not the same as a housing that has to hold a board without play.
  • It is validated before the batch is made. A first part is printed and tested fitted, in place. Correcting a prototype costs an afternoon; finding the problem once the batch is made costs a good deal more.
  • The model is archived. If another unit is needed in two years, or twenty, they are made the same way without starting over.

Who it is for

Companies that need to house their electronics in a case made to measure, keep machinery in service when the spare is no longer manufactured, or validate a product before investing in tooling.

And private customers with the same problem on another scale: the appliance part that is no longer sold, the broken mechanism in something that otherwise works perfectly, the accessory that simply doesn’t exist. A good many of the published projects started there.

There is no minimum order, and a one-off part gets the same method as a batch.

What has been made so far is in the projects section, with photographs and technical details. It is the best way to see whether it fits what you need.