pic: Floating Zip Tie Chain Tensioner

[dtengineering]

Originally Posted by Cory

I think it'd be best for him to step back and view this from an economical perspective.

....

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).

I'll agree with the importance of researching the market as part of a business plan. I would have a hard time seeing how someone could get rich manufacturing these tensioners, however I have no problem believing that they could be manufacutured profitably. Potentially the greatest profit to be had from marketing and manufacturing them is the experience of developing a business plan, refining the production techniques, setting up a business and running it. Even if the business runs at a small loss having that on a resume and that exeperience as part of a professional tool set will be worth thousands of dollars....

But I strongly disagree with the need to have them injection molded in order to turn a profit. The elegance of this particular design is that, as I have mentioned, it can be mass produced in a woodwork shop. The table saw is great for cutting long straight lines and long deep grooves. If you look at the jigs used for creating finger joints that might give you an idea how to make repeated, evenly spaced cuts. Do the cuts on one side of a sheet of HDPE, flip it over, turn it 90 degrees and do the cuts in the opposite direction, then slice it and cut to length to turn out the final product.

This will require a bit of R&D... talking to someone with some fine woodworking experience would be a big help. I would also suggest prototyping the production process using a less expensive material, such as MDF, until the jigs are worked out and acceptable tolerances are achieved.

For an investment of probably less than $200, plus hours and hours of work, it is quite possible to have hundreds of these produced and ready to go very quickly.

I don't think anyone is going to become a millionaire off of this, but the beauty of it is that done properly any financial losses... even if sales are terrible... will be offset by the educational value of going through the entrepreneurial process.

Go for it!

Jason