Small Startup Dreams Big with iPhone Accessories 

3D printing and simulation applications have gained popularity in the manufacturing sector. The ability to test without fabrication and subsequently print out prototypes has helped traditional manufacturers accelerate their time to market. The process saves money too, which means these tools are also helping smaller startups.

Recently, Digital Manufacturing Report spoke with Nate Justiss, one of the three members that make up distilunion. The South Carolina startup is currently in the process of building and marketing their first product called Snooze. It’s a small stand that replaces a classic alarm clock in favor of an iPhone. 

DMR: Tell us about the distilunion team. Have you or your partners been involved in product development / manufacturing in the past?

Nate Justiss: The team consists of Lindsay Windham, Adam Printz and Myself. We all worked together for Philips inventing, designing, packaging and marketing iPhone, iPod, and iPad accessories. When our office moved to Stamford, CT, we stayed in Charleston to do freelance work but after about 6 months of that, we decided to band together and produce our own products. We missed the teamwork and camaraderie of collaborating on new projects. Snooze is our first offering but we have a ton of ideas we're developing behind it.

DMR: Can you break down the process of developing the Snooze? What tools did you use?

Nate Justiss: Snooze started out as a silly conversation on our way to do product research at a local Best Buy. We often go shopping together just to see what sort of problems have been solved out there and how they've missed the mark in some way. It really is good to get out of the office and organically talk about ideas. You never know what might inspire you in solving a problem, applying a material or even packaging a product. Sometimes we come back with 20 or more ideas that can sustain us for a year. Ideas are cheap. The execution is the tough part.

This is the part of development where we've really benefited from the tools we use, from a Wacom tablet to sketch up initial ideas and the wood working tools we use to rough out prototypes, to the CAD we use to refine them, to the 3D printers we use to realize them. All this digital technology aids us in rapidly accelerating our product development cycles. We're in an industry where speed is key. Apple is very tight-lipped about what is coming out so our ability to react once they release a product is of great importance.

DMR: How many prototypes did your team design prior to fabricating the first physical unit?

Nate Justiss: We're really still in prototype phase with Snooze. We're up to the level of prototype tooling for our rubber and plastic pieces and our wood samples are being produced as they would in a factory. The level of precision in manufacturing the wood is quite impressive. We're still making tweaks and changes but what we have now are very close to production.

Including the rough prototypes we made here in our office, we're now on our 8th proto. Since about model 4, the tweaks have been very minor. Prototyping for us really helps us get to where we're going quickly. We learn the most in our first rough mockups. We often call those Frankenstein models because we'll pull pieces and parts from stuff we have lying around just to prove the concept. If we can't get it to work at that level or don't see promise or usefulness, we'll often leave it at that. If, however, we see a spark of promise, we'll quickly refine that and get a model printed up or otherwise manufactured to approximate a realistic product. We regularly use FDM, SLA, Urethane castings, and milling to build these. 

DMR: Have you created products without CAD or 3D printers? If so, how would you compare the design and manufacturing process?

Nate Justiss: CAD has always been involved in our process for smaller products. We've found that using CAD in conjunction with 3D printers always keeps the control in the hands of the designers and engineers. Adam and I went to school together at Auburn University where we studied Industrial Design. We were trained in basic drafting and marker rendering to get the fundamentals down. We enjoyed it, but soon realized that later in the curriculum when we were taught the more advanced tools, we could do so much more. We taught ourselves Rhino and have been using it ever since. We've come of age, as designers, in a time where CAD is king. We're always impressed with products made before CAD was available because we know how much work had to go into it. However, we're not going back.