Those of you who know me at all, know I’m something of a tinkerer. I like to dream things up and make them, for example, all terrain rollerblades in 1994. I’ve picked up a few wood and metal working skills through the years, but I’m by no means a professional.

So what do you do when you find you’d like to create a 1mm diameter stainless steel fan for a micro-turbine you’ve been dreaming up? I could try to fabricate a component like this forever and never quite get it right.

Tada! eMachineShop.com comes to the rescue. The first network enabled fabrication shop. Simply download their software. From there, you design your widget and submit it to them over the net for pricing. If you accept their bid, they’ll fabricate the widget and ship it to you. Way cool. And a very clever business model using the power of the network and sharing software to bring in customers world-wide.

Widget from eMachineShop.com

If there’s one thing I’d change about this service, I’d make the software run on any platfom, perhaps we can convince them to release the next version in Java. Right now it’s limited to various Windows versions. Other than that, it’s a simple and nifty little CAD program.