Maple Plain, Minn., November 22, 2010—Proto Labs, Inc. (www.protolabs.com), the global leader in quick-turn CNC machining and injection molding, announced that 7075-T651 Aluminum, 260 Brass, Radel R5500, and Flame Retardant ABS are now available to design engineers seeking quick-turn machined parts via the Firstcut Service. These new materials serve to enhance a growing list of over 30 different material choices which already includes ABS, Nylon, Polycarbonate, Delrin, PEEK, ULTEM, 6061 Aluminum and more.

“We are happy to announce new material choices for Firstcut,” said Brad Cleveland, President and CEO of Proto Labs, Inc. “Our expanded offering of materials provides design engineers with even more choices to get real parts for functional testing and one-off applications. We are continuing development work to provide even more material choices and anticipate additional announcements like this in the coming months.”

About Proto Labs
Proto Labs has radically changed the economics and lead times associated with low-volume production of CNC machined and injection molded parts through the use of proprietary software running on a compute cluster at over 3 trillion floating point operations per second.  Proto Labs offers two quick-turn services in North America, Europe and Japan: Firstcut (www.firstcut.com) CNC machining and Protomold (www.protomold.com) injection molding, both capable of providing parts in as fast as one business day.  Design engineers who use Proto Labs for prototypes and short-run production can upload a CAD file at any one of Proto Labs online sites, get a quote and place an order for Proto Labs services directly online.  For more information, visit: www.protolabs.com.