View Single Post
  #3   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 19-08-2008, 00:19
Cory's Avatar
Cory Cory is offline
Registered User
AKA: Cory McBride
FRC #0254 (The Cheesy Poofs)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: May 2002
Rookie Year: 2001
Location: Redwood City, CA
Posts: 6,792
Cory has a reputation beyond reputeCory has a reputation beyond reputeCory has a reputation beyond reputeCory has a reputation beyond reputeCory has a reputation beyond reputeCory has a reputation beyond reputeCory has a reputation beyond reputeCory has a reputation beyond reputeCory has a reputation beyond reputeCory has a reputation beyond reputeCory has a reputation beyond repute
Send a message via AIM to Cory
Re: pic: Floating Zip Tie Chain Tensioner

Quote:
Originally Posted by dtengineering View Post
P.S. Good luck with manufacturing and marketing your design. It looks like a design that is extremely well-suited to mass production and once you get your jigs worked out you should be able to churn them out by the hundreds fairly quickly.
I think it'd be best for him to step back and view this from an economical perspective.

Think about how many of these you need to make, how quickly each one needs to be made, and how much you need to sell them for to break even.

Then think about how many you think you can possibly sell.

If you do the math, I don't think it's a viable investment to try to mass produce these, or even make them on a fairly large scale.

To actually make money you need to be injection molding, not milling these. Injection molding is orders of magnitude more expensive than even the most generous estimate of demand for these.

Given demand, and cost of contracting these out to a machine shop, or time involved in making them yourself, I don't think you can come out on top. Especially given that anyone with a manual mill or even drill press with x+y table can make one of these in about 15 minutes.

Keep in mind that if you choose to make them or have someone else machine them, you have to be able to meet the criteria of a vendor, as well as be capable to potentially ship one to every team in FIRST, if they ordered one, within x time period (I think 5-7 days? can't recall).
__________________
2001-2004: Team 100
2006-Present: Team 254
Reply With Quote