Case Study: Rob Pleas Photography achieves fast, reliable CNC production with 3D Systems (GibbsCAM)

Welder Starts New Business Production Enabled by GibbsCAM

Rob Pleas, owner of The Welding Place in Puyallup, WA, expanded his custom fabrication shop into photographic accessories like a lightweight gimbal tripod head and folding L‑brackets. As demand grew and major retailers showed interest, his manual lathe and mill — which required hours to prototype and revise — and an unreliable entry‑level CAM system became bottlenecks, causing lost parts and long programming times.

Pleas restored a used Lagun CNC, adopted SolidWorks for fast modeling, and chose GibbsCAM for CAM and post‑processing. GibbsCAM opened SolidWorks files directly, cut programming time dramatically (one profiling task from ~20 minutes to ~1 minute), provided trustworthy simulation and exact post‑processor output, and enabled Pleas to move into production within months with improved finishes and machine performance — positioning him to scale product lines further.

Rob Pleas Photography