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skalpt / purple-elephant

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Product Casing #7

Open skalpt opened 10 years ago

skalpt commented 10 years ago

I really have no idea how we are going to produce an outer shell for this product. How do other companies make their plastic casings? Who do they use, how much does it cost and what is the MOQ? How do we go about prototyping?

skalpt commented 10 years ago

How do we go about prototyping?

One option is 3D printing. There are plenty of local 3D printing services, and they will accept designs made using SketchUp which is free and easy to learn. Another advantage of 3D printing is that there are tons of ideas floating around that we can use as a starting point. The most popular site for 3D designs is Thingiverse.

What is the MOQ?

Again, we might want to consider buying a 3D printer to start out with. That way we can make as many or few casings as we like. They start at only $100(1), and if you shop around you can find pretty decent ones for about $500. The obvious disadvantage is that it will not scale well to large quantities. 3D printers are very slow, and the plastic ("ink") is relatively expensive.

Before we go down the path of 3D printing, the main question we have to ask ourselves is: will the designs that we come up with be transferable to bulk manufacturing processes? Before we can answer that question, we need to figure out what large companies are doing. E.g. how is the casing manufactured for a basic double adapter purchased at the supermarket?

De-Pa commented 10 years ago

I have been thinking about that too. For my fibre optic products I have drilled holes in a 'casing' for another product, filling the holes in after to leave a professional looking (and compact) casing. Perhaps we can adapt/use some sort of standard plug, possibly with a round plastic container stuck on it. For the switch perhaps we could piggyback a plug and socket. RS have lots of 'enclosures' - see http://australia.rs-online.com and search enclosures - but they are expensive. In the past I have bought one-off's from them and then when I have what I wanted, looked around for a (much) cheaper source.

skalpt commented 10 years ago

For the switch perhaps we could piggyback a plug and socket

I was actually thinking about using double adapters. You have a plug on one side, a socket on the other, and with the removal of some wiring a small housing up the top!

De-Pa commented 10 years ago

Not convinced about 3D printing; as I understand it even small runs (of 20 say) would take ~10 hours or more and, because of the ink cost, would be relatively expensive. I would prefer to utilise something 'off-the-shelf' as it should be cheap if it is injection molded in quantity. However, we should investigate 3D more closely as my perceptions of cost and time might be wrong.

De-Pa commented 10 years ago

Yeah, what is MOQ a TLA (three letter acronym) for?

skalpt commented 10 years ago

Not convinced about 3D printing

Me neither.

even small runs (of 20 say) would take ~10 hours or more and, because of the ink cost, would be relatively expensive

Yes, that is correct. Would be good for initial prototyping only.

what is MOQ

Minimum Order Quantity

skalpt commented 10 years ago

Blue Block

De-Pa commented 10 years ago

Could also be a logo!