Boring is a feature
A machine tool earns trust by doing the same thing every day for years. We spend our novelty budget on tolerances, not touchscreens.
Toolmakers first
About
Sinterra builds FDM machines in Tacoma, Washington, the way our founders were taught to build aerospace tooling: machined, sealed, measured, and warrantied like we mean it.
Layer by layer
Since 2016
2016
The tideflats building
Elena Marsh and Doug Reiter leave an aerospace tooling shop with two CNC mills, a lease on 2140 Tideflats Way, and a conviction: 3D printers fail because they're built like gadgets.
2017
Prototype 7 holds tolerance
Six frames flex, creep, or resonate. The seventh — machined 6061, sealed rails — prints the same test bracket 300 times within ±0.03 mm. It's still printing in the lobby.
2019
Shale ships
The first product is the small one, priced for benches, not bragging. 1,400 units in year one, almost entirely word of mouth between machinists.
2021
Basalt and the chamber
An actively heated, sealed chamber brings engineering polymers into reach. The acceptance test becomes the sales pitch: every machine ships with its own measured report.
2023
Stratafil goes in-house
Tired of blaming filament, we start winding our own. Drying, sealing, and ±0.02 mm tolerance from a line fifty feet from final assembly.
2025
Gneiss, the half-meter cube
The industrial machine — 90 °C chamber, ball screws, HEPA. It replaces machining quotes, which is the highest compliment we know.
One building, everything in it
The works
Machining, winding, assembly, QA, and support share one roof on the tideflats. When support says “let me walk over and check,” they mean it literally.
Manufacturing philosophy
How we build
Specs stated flat
No 'revolutionary,' no exclamation points. If a number matters, we publish it with the measurement method next to it.
Rendered, not photographed
Our imagery comes from our CAD. It keeps marketing honest: you can't retouch a dimension.
We hire people who torque to spec
Careers
Machinists, motion-control engineers, and support folks who like explaining first layers. Openings are posted when they're real — currently: CNC machinist (swing shift), firmware engineer.
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