Jeff Deehan is a real estate developer by day and a "hobby guy" by night.

The 42-year-old has a workshop in his East Lansing house. One project remained elusive: a small piece of steel to secure a camper to his truck. While Deehan was toying with OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra in voice mode, he described the piece he needed and the angle at which it would sit. Five minutes later, the chatbot had prototyped it.

GPT-6 Astra designed a steel part to secure a camper to Jeff Deehan's truck. Jeff Deehan

Deehan told GPT-6 that he knew of a company called SendCutSend that does custom sheet-metal fabrication. The chatbot downloaded its design as a DXF file, opened SendCutSend's website, filled in the form, and paid the $156 with the payment information he'd stored. Ten days later, it was on his doorstep.

"In about 10 minutes, I spoke a part out of my mind into existence, without touching my phone," he said.

Deehan is part of a growing class of enthusiasts who are building physical gizmos with AI's help. They use chatbots to build prototypes, then send the AI-generated files to manufacturers, boutique fabricators, and their home 3D printers.

Jeff Deehan ordered the truck piece from SendCutSend. It shipped in 10 days. Jeff Deehan

Modeling physical items with AI has its risks. Deehan was sure his prototype would be a millimeter off here or there, though it ended up being right on. Other vibe manufacturers said that their products took multiple iterations, burning through their budgets.

Normies have long used AI to write software, now dubbed "vibe coding." These builders say AI is coming for hardware creation, too — and they're calling it "vibe manufacturing."

A growing CADtastrophe

Amy Zhou and Jake Fitzgerald are building an open-source tool for vibe manufacturing. They call it "text-to-CAD" — and it already tops 23,000 stars on GitHub.

Zhou previously worked on the iPhone cases team at Apple and is now a design engineer at the AI rendering startup Vizcom. Fitzgerald wanted to get back into robotics after pivoting to crypto. They text new ideas back and forth between San Francisco and New York.

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The duo hopes to upend CAD, or computer-aided design. CAD engineers use software to design and optimize 3D models. It takes training and skill. The vibe manufacturers say you can do it easily with a large language model.

Zhou makes jewelry with AI. The 25-year-old's previous startup turned pictures users uploaded into 3D models of charms, then cast the models in wax. It made a necklace for Cluely's CEO, Roy Lee, before Zhou left the business. She still occasionally makes AI-rendered charms for friends when they want necklaces of their pets.

Amy Zhou turns photos into wax-cast jewelry with AI's help. Amy Zhou

Fitzgerald is more interested in making robot arms. Using the text-to-CAD tool, the 31-year-old designed the arm in sheet metal and paid about $200 to have it built by SendCutSend. It has 0.6 meters of reach, with a motor and a camera, and he considers it an "edutainment" product to learn about robotics before the industry booms.

A few months ago, Fitzgerald saw "compounding failures" when the AI would build bad designs on top of bad designs. The screw holes came in loose, for example. He spent about $2,000 repeatedly ordering pieces. With GPT-6 Astra, he said that's no longer a problem.

Jake Fitzgerald prototyped a robot arm with his text-to-CAD AI tool. Jake Fitzgerald

Sourish Sharma has watched AI change CAD. The 20-year-old from London got an MRI scan for a research study three years ago and asked for his data. He got a 3D printer and used an open-source tool to turn the data file into something printable. The tool didn't work very well, so he had to edit it by hand. "Some of the folds of the brain were not very foldy," he said.

Now, Sharma has a much bigger printer — and AI. With one prompt, GPT-6 Astra blew the open-source tool out of the water, converting the data and making what he considers a more accurate brain. He's printed out a life-size one, as well as a handful of miniatures that he gives to friends.

Sourish Sharma used AI to turn data from his MRI into a 3D-printed brain. Sourish Sharma

"AI literally does replace CAD engineering completely," Sharma said. "It's kind of unfortunate if you're a CAD engineer. Fortunately, I'm not."

The first audience: kids

The more complex a product is, the more difficult it is to vibe manufacture. You won't be able to make a car at home with ChatGPT anytime soon.

There's one population whose products are often simple and accessible: kids. Arthur Prince, a 34-year-old IT worker from outside Paris, said the children's toy he modeled in a week with AI would've taken him months with his CAD knowledge alone.

Prince's toy creates stories and images with AI based on a kid's voice prompt. He developed everything, from the casing to the internal wiring, with GPT-6 Astra, then asked Claude to criticize its work. Once the two chatbots reached a consensus, he ordered 10 of the toys from the Chinese manufacturer JLCPCB for about 500 euros, fretting that he'd wasted his money on something that wouldn't work.

Arthur Prince prototyped a toy for his daughter with GPT-6 Astra. Arthur Prince

Luckily, they did. Prince's first tester, his daughter, loves it. "She's very proud to see that I can make something like this," he said.

The benefit of vibe manufacturing kids' toys is their simplicity. Many parents don't want their children surfing the web, so AI prototypers don't have to worry about those pesky questions of cell service and web browsers.

David Plakon wanted his kids to leave messages for their grandparents in Florida — but didn't want them on the internet.

The 39-year-old from Austin is a longtime "tinkerer." He's had a 3D printer since 2015, and was printing his kid a "KPop Demon Hunters" sword while we spoke. So, he and his wife, Lara, figured they could build their own answering machine in the style of the Tin Can phone.

David Plakon has printed the case for his answering box about 15 times. David Plakon

Plakon gave GPT-6 Astra some design inspiration and instructions to build a prototype. All of the parts had to be purchasable or buildable with his 3D printer, he told the chatbot. It easily put together a model, instructing him to buy a potentiometer, a speaker, and an ESP32 chip, and guided him through the assembly.

He's now printed the design some 15 times, improving it on each go. Initially, some of the pieces didn't fit together. "AI's good but not perfect," he said.

David Plakon is still iterating on his voicebox, though the tech officially works. David Plakon

But the box does work, and he hopes to sell it one day. He's keeping it small-scale for now, aiming to get the answering box in the grandparents' home for Christmas.

"I don't have any delusion that I could send this to a factory, and they would be able to make it," Plakon said. "For now, it's very fun to prototype."