Patent Pending

[pyronaught]

Wow, that seems like such a simple piece it's hard to believe the molds are costing $10K each. I've only briefly searched mold prices but I thought I saw $3K somewhere for simple molds and it wasn't a Chinese company. I would think CNC mills would allow making low cost molds for simple small parts like that.

So once you get the molds made then you have to send them to the company that is actually going to make the parts? Seems like you'd have to sell thousands of lures just to break even.

Formlabs makes a desktop SLA printer that sells for just over $3K. The high cost of the resin is probably what makes them a lot less popular than FFF printers, but they can print really smooth parts and would probably be ideal for prototyping small, glassy smooth parts like your lures. You might have issues with the eyelets ripping out though, I don't know how tough that resin is.

[Capt. John]

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2200 spoons in production, project has come full circle made possible by
learning how to make 3D prints with the help offered here, on this board.

Thanks all for your advice!

[jimc]

oh man are you sitting there putting all those decals on yourself john?

[Capt. John]

Jim, got help installing the die cuts, about 3rd are my work. Will be sending you some spoon blanks soon,
just too busy for the time being.

To pyro:

9.5-10k is dirt cheap for 2 cavity injection molds that will make 1000s and 1000s of parts.
There's a lot of engineering that goes into the water courses to cool the mold between shots.
Have one tool that pushes 30k to make boxed-in on 3 sides parts. Tool steel alone can run 3k
or more depending on tool size. Injection molds are highly complex tools built to run/cycle
parts fair clip, then cool all at once so the mold can open and eject. 9.5k is chicken feed
for a tool that has the potential to make a millions dollars in product over time depending
on your target audience's acceptance.

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12" flasher single cavity mold

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Bait head, multi tool with 4 slides, makes 3 types of parts.
This tool is in action making bait heads, green thing sticking out
is the parts tree that aids in ejecting the heads.

I see people getting touchy over the 2k purchase price of M2s with S3D software.
Once again chicken feed, if you're going to prototypes that make injection tools.
I'm willing to bet, 75% of the members here all see existing products that can be turned
into projects for your M2 and injection tools to bring new products, parts and ideas into the world.

[pyronaught]

You'd have to really have high volume to pay off those molds though. For a low-volume niche product you couldn't afford to do something like that, especially for something complex that had many pieces. I wonder if anyone is using 3D printed parts as the method of production for small quantity niche products? There's the 3D printer part kits themselves like the Rep Rap stuff, but what about general consumer products? I wonder if a room full of 3D printers running around the clock could be a viable method of low volume production under some circumstances.

[insta]

You'd have to really have high volume to pay off those molds though. For a low-volume niche product you couldn't afford to do something like that, especially for something complex that had many pieces. I wonder if anyone is using 3D printed parts as the method of production for small quantity niche products? There's the 3D printer part kits themselves like the Rep Rap stuff, but what about general consumer products? I wonder if a room full of 3D printers running around the clock could be a viable method of low volume production under some circumstances.

Lulzbot uses a farm of around 130 printers running around the clock to produce their parts. That's probably into actual "small-scale" manufacturing territory.

[jimc]

Man thats alit. I cant imagine them selling that many printers.

I use my m2 to make small production runs if parts. I make digital replica volt/amp and frequency meters for old military diesel generatirs. I have made 260 of them so far in the past maybe 8 mos. without 3d printing there is no way these could be produced and actually be worth buying. Too much in production cost that would need to be overcome.

[pyronaught]

Man thats alit. I cant imagine them selling that many printers.

I use my m2 to make small production runs if parts. I make digital replica volt/amp and frequency meters for old military diesel generatirs. I have made 260 of them so far in the past maybe 8 mos. without 3d printing there is no way these could be produced and actually be worth buying. Too much in production cost that would need to be overcome.

Geez, that's almost one sale per day! I'm surprised there is that much demand for something that obscure. Definitely a good 3D printer application though. I'm curious what they look like, do you have a link to some pics?

Do those require electronic parts or is it all just pure printed plastic? I have several ideas for print-on-demand products, but the problem I run into is they all require a fairly expensive collection of parts in addition to the printed parts and I don't want to have to inventory that stuff. But then if you don't have the parts on hand and someone orders one, there's going to be a big delay waiting for parts to arrive. I guess as long as the customer understands there's going to be a delay up front, but having to wait too long might impact sales.

[jimc]

yes there are electronics involved. i have a company produce the guts for for me. each gauge requires 4 printed parts, 1 laser cut lens for the bezel and the faces are printed. then there is the assortment or hardware. some screws, nuts, etc

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[pyronaught]

So do you just inventory a certain amount of parts and hope they sell or do you order parts for each sale? I would think trying to estimate potential sales volume on something that niche would be difficult.