Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Hill
Do you already have the molds? :-/ Those can easily be $100,000 per, and it looks like you'll need two of them. Have you worked with anyone who has done injection molding before? Because you can't directly translate from a 3D printed part. For example, vertical sides are very difficult to achieve with injection molding, so you generally use about a 1 degree angle on all sides (check out the CAD file for the roboRIO if you don't believe me). There are also quite a few other things to be wary of.
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The cost of mold making has come down in price significantly over the last decade. You can do a full set of molds for this size part for 15-20k. Also depending on the molder he is using you could just do a family tool for both parts in a single mold, to reduce the cost even farther. Even less if you go to asia instead of domestically. You can save even more if you choose aluminum molds for low quantities (less than 5,000 pieces) as the machining time is much less.
You are actually looking at a pretty good designed part for plastic, as it uses some of the best tricks to reduce the cost, large draft angles, using shut offs to create hols instead of slides, fairly constant wall thickness, and generous radius in the corners. I would say luke has it all under control and I look forward to seeing these in action.