[bsder]

> why do small startups choose to manufacture in China to begin with?

Poor pricing decisions.

Most Kickstarters can't get people to fund "Thingit X" if it costs over $100.

Hell, I'd be hard pressed to put a Beaglebone+wacky I/O thingy+software in a case and shove it out at a profit at $100. And I think I know what I'm doing after a couple decades at this.

And, electronics is NEVER the problem for me. I can generally spin 50 turnkey boards in a week for around $5K unless there is something amazingly exotic about the board. That's just not that expensive relative to business costs.

The things that kill are always the mechanicals. Injection molds are $15K plus for a single mold--and there is always something wrong with the first mold. And you probably need at least 2.

And that's just the case. If you need to mount a display or battery or something that's even more molds.

So, I'm above $50K for injection molds without blinking for even a VERY simple product.

The real solution is to make sure your product is above $100 (preferably significantly) so you can actually 3D print the required plastics (which will be around $10 per part). Now, you can tune your plastic parts and you don't have the NRE of molds. After you have everything tuned and have some volume, THEN you can cut a mold. And, you may never cut a mold--you can print over a thousand parts at $10 per part for $10K. How many Kickstarters ever ship more that a thousand of anything?

[CamperBob2]

The real solution is to make sure your product is above $100 (preferably significantly) so you can actually 3D print the required plastics (which will be around $10 per part). Now, you can tune your plastic parts and you don't have the NRE of molds. After you have everything tuned and have some volume, THEN you can cut a mold. And, you may never cut a mold--you can print over a thousand parts at $10 per part for $10K. How many Kickstarters ever ship more that a thousand of anything?

Good points there -- I have a scenario in mind that resembles this example. Do you have a favorite 3D printer for small instrument/device cases? Or do you outsource that work to someone who does?

So, I'm above $50K for injection molds without blinking for even a VERY simple product.

Also, something I've never understood about injection molding is why the hobbyist-accessible CNC revolution of the past 10 years or so hasn't reduced the cost of creating molds. If I do a GIS for "injection molds," it shows me a lot of pictures of things that, although concave, could easily be built by aggregating a small number of machined parts.

[bsder]

> Do you have a favorite 3D printer for small instrument/device cases? Or do you outsource that work to someone who does?

Outsource. I want a useful 3D printer with materials like nylon, not a MakerBot. There should be people around in any reasonably sized city. I believe that some of the Solidworks resellers now do 3D printing as a service.

One thing that people continue to underestimate are silicone molds. 3D print the positive--create a silicone negative mold from the 3D positive. Now you can make your own parts out of liquid silicone rubber--some durometers of which are almost as hard as some plastics.

Yes, this is incredibly messy, time consuming work, but if you have more time and/or hands than money, it's not a bad choice.

> Also, something I've never understood about injection molding is why the hobbyist-accessible CNC revolution of the past 10 years or so hasn't reduced the cost of creating molds.

Because no injection molder wants to deal with people producing <10,000 parts. The setup time on the injection machine exceeds the profit.

I don't even need a CNC machine to create a metal mold--people did do this by hand for a whole lot of years. However, even if I could produce the mold for free, the molder doesn't want to waste the time on me.

For that reason, practically every successful electronics component producing company has both a machine shop and an injection molding machine on site. Both of them tend to sit idle 90+% of the time, but every time they get used, they save $50,000.