From code to CO₂: why we're starting Forge.
We're opening a fabrication studio. 3D printing and precision laser work, built on the same philosophy we bring to software. It's called Forge. It launches end of 2026. Here's why.
This announcement has been a year and a half coming. We've been prototyping in a spare room for most of that time — small prints for clients, engraved gifts, the occasional bracket to fix a desk. Nothing was stopping us from carrying on that way forever. It was a useful hobby that paid for itself.
But we kept running into the same thing: the supply of good, custom, small-batch physical work is much worse than the supply of good software work. If you want a bespoke website for your restaurant, there are a hundred studios who'll do it well. If you want a hundred custom-engraved wooden coasters for your opening, or a run of parts for a prototype, or a batch of signage for a villa — the options are Etsy drop-shippers, eBay, or a factory in China with a minimum order quantity of a thousand.
There's a gap in the market for small-run, properly-finished, locally-made physical work. We're going to try to fill a piece of it.
Why now
The machines have quietly gotten very good. Consumer-grade 3D printers hit a quality threshold maybe three years ago where the output is genuinely indistinguishable from industrial injection-moulded parts for most use cases. Diode and CO₂ lasers at accessible price points now cut wood, acrylic, leather, and thin steel with results that match commercial laser shops from a decade ago.
So the equipment cost has fallen enough that you can set up a proper small fabrication studio for what a decent car costs. That's not nothing, but it's not prohibitive the way it was in 2015. What remains expensive is the taste and patience to use the equipment well — which turns out to be what we're good at.
We'd been watching this happen for a while. The decision to actually do it came after a specific project where a client needed a run of custom signage for a villa and we spent three weeks trying to find someone local who could produce it at the quality we wanted. Nobody could. We'd already been printing brackets and engraving gifts on our machines at home. The gap became impossible to ignore.
Why us
Fair question. We're a software studio. What business do we have running a fab shop?
Our honest answer: the same things we're good at in software — obsessive finish, small batches done right, saying no to bad-fit work — seem to transfer cleanly. Fabrication is a craft discipline, the same as a well-made website. The equipment is different. The taste isn't.
And practically: most of our clients are hospitality and small-business operators. They already order physical things — signage, menus, custom pieces, retail packaging. If we can produce those to a studio standard and ship them from the same floor as their website maintenance, we save them a supplier relationship. One studio, one invoice, one aesthetic.
Fabrication is a craft discipline, the same as a well-made website. The equipment is different. The taste isn't.
What you'll be able to order
At launch, end of 2026, the studio will offer:
3D printing
- FDM printing in PLA, PETG, ASA, and PC for functional parts, small cases, brackets, and prototypes.
- SLA resin printing for high-detail parts — small jewellery, precision models, replacement components for unusual hardware.
- Short runs (1 to 500 parts). Not mass manufacturing. Not one-off hobby prints with no quality control.
Laser cutting & engraving
- CO₂ laser on wood (plywood, hardwood, MDF), acrylic, leather, fabric, card.
- Engraving on wood, acrylic, anodised aluminium, steel.
- Signage, labels, custom-engraved items, branded small batches, bespoke retail packaging.
We're deliberately not trying to be everything. No large-format CNC, no metal additive, no injection moulding. Those are adjacent industries with their own deep specialists. We'll refer to them gladly.
How it connects
Forge sits naturally alongside the two things we already do — custom websites for clients, and Solera as our own platform. Many clients who use both will end up using Forge too. If your boutique hotel needs new signage that matches your newly-rebuilt site, it'd be weird for you to need a separate supplier for it. If your restaurant using Solera wants branded menu holders, we can make those.
The reverse matters too. When we've spent years designing something for a client on screen, we already understand the brand well enough to produce good physical pieces for it. A random external vendor has to start from zero.
Over the long term, Forge is also a bet on where independent studios will matter in the next decade. Software alone is a crowded market. Studios that work in both bits and atoms — that can design an experience, build the site, and then produce the physical pieces that live in the space — are genuinely rare. We'd like to be one of them.
Timeline
Through 2026 we're building out the studio — more machines, proper ventilation and safety, a material supply chain, a pricing sheet, a web-based ordering portal. We're also accepting a small number of pilot projects with existing clients, so that by launch we'll have case studies and real samples rather than just equipment specs.
Public opening end of 2026. The ordering portal will go live on the main site, with a small catalogue of ready-to-order items and a request flow for custom work. We'll announce the exact date once the last machine is installed and the last material test is passed.
In the meantime, if you're already a client and have a pilot project in mind, tell us. The waitlist is open for anyone who wants to be first when Forge launches.
This is the biggest expansion of SA-HR since we started. It's also a return to something foundational: studios used to make physical things. Agencies talking about pixels and conversion rates is a relatively recent thing. We like the older version of the craft a bit more, and we're going to try to carry some of it forward.
More updates through the year. Machines that listen. Parts that last.