Wanted Manufacturer - Custom Design Plastic Enclosure for Consumer Product

[Mechatrommer]

i'm looking for manufacturer that can make my own design plastic enclosure into reality. the small size around 2.5" x 1.5" x 0.5" dimension, portable electronics consumer product stuff. preferably located in china, because their ems shipping cost is cheaper. but if you have suggestion from the far side of west, also please advice, maybe i can leverage the cost by bulk order. i'm not looking for ready made cuboid box, i can get that easy. i want custom my own made design, just like pcb we send gerber to manufacturer and they produce it, but this time is for plastic enclosure i send my cad they produce. if anyone working with company producing this kind of consumer products, you should have good resources on the manufacturer, and i ask for your help, thanks.

nov 2011 update: this can provide some nice plastic enclosure...
http://www.teko.it/
http://www.okwenclosures.com/
http://www.polycase.com/
http://www.elpac.de/
(but still limited custom option, prebuild stuffs)

my personal fav:
http://www.okwenclosures.com/products/okw/minitec-mm.htm

[Mechatrommer]

i've noted it earlier. its mainly for metal enclosure from the look of their website.
related threads are below. but the links i've browsed mostly for premade box. last time i suggested polycase can do custom box, but i cannot see anymore in their website.
Project Enclosures
Decent project boxes

[ToBeFrank]

Sadly, the community falls apart when it comes to getting real world experience on taking small projects to market. There's plenty of info on getting boards fabricated, but either people never move on to full production, or they don't want to share who they use for assembly, how they get cables made, who makes their enclosure, etc.

I've got a project that I'm slowly moving towards the market. I don't know what your budget is, but when I looked at custom enclosures, it's thousands of dollars. They have to make a mold specifically for you and that's not cheap. I ended up designing for an off the shelf enclosure, and I'll just have a manufacturer drill it and silk screen it. Much cheaper.

[Mechatrommer]

yes, i expect quite big investment on it. i hope i can manage. thats why i asked if there's china source, i hope they can be much cheaper compared to developed country manufacturer (even big company moved to china) @BAW: so is TV be gone a success? or failure? despite its huge initial invesment? big risk big chance? i've seen those non-cuboid more fancy shape enclosure, but none fit my current project (shape and size). and i know off the shelf can be customized to punch holes and printing. i'm thinking something like pictured below, but with my own arrangement of switches, battery compartment, antenna etc. i dont think customizing existing box will suffice my need, but i hope there will be premade that can satisfy me, still searching.



but not that complex, more like this simpler cheapo chinese product. i believe its custom box....

[Mechatrommer]

or this... i dont think it can be customized from the 2nd picture above (round shape on its front (below) vs not so round (above)) they are different mould right? chinese people are very creative.



or special this...

[Mechatrommer]

tag... http://www.newageenclosures.com/services/design.php

[daedalus]

How many do you need, and what stage are you at in terms of taking this to market? Do you want a few dozen prototypes, or 10k ready to market cases?

Do you have a finished mechanical design for the case, or a napkin sketch? (are you looking for someone to do design work for you?) Designing cases for injection molding is not trivial, so you might be best finding someone who can assist on the design front.

If you are prototyping / doing pre-production units for user testing, then I would suggest rapid prototyping, as you avoid the huge tooling costs involved in injection moulded plastics. It lets you get prototypes fast, and iterate quickly. Downside is the structural strength and cosmetics are worse, however good prototyping shops will be able to sand/polish these models so they are nearly indistinguishable. Obviously this is no good for production.

Next up are prototyping injection mold shops, such as http://www.protomold.co.uk. They have quicker turnaround times then most big places, and tend to take small orders (note I haven't used protomold myself, but have heard good things). They can turn around a design in around 15 days.

After that comes "proper" injection moulding, expect to have to sink in around £5k for the mould, and commit to 20-50k units purchase order. Also there is a significant lead time on making the tool, so budget 4-6 weeks to get your mold done.

To be honest this kind of question would get many more answers on cnczone.com then here, as its really more of a mechanical engineering question.

[Mechatrommer]

How many do you need, and what stage are you at in terms of taking this to market?

stage=prototyping/testing. quantity? estimated initial = 100 units (i know, dont reply, just laugh it up)

Do you have a finished mechanical design for the case, or a napkin sketch? (are you looking for someone to do design work for you?) Designing cases for injection molding is not trivial, so you might be best finding someone who can assist on the design front.

let me do the design, to reduce cost i'm still CADing it.

If you are prototyping / doing pre-production units for user testing, then I would suggest rapid prototyping...

thanks for the advice. i think i will go this route.

Next up are prototyping injection mold shops, such as http://www.protomold.co.uk
To be honest this kind of question would get many more answers on cnczone.com then here, as its really more of a mechanical engineering question.

thanks for the link, i will look to it.

After that comes "proper" injection moulding, expect to have to sink in around £5k for the mould, and commit to 20-50k units purchase order.

i just dont get it. building a mould (from aluminum alloy i guess) for a small ~ 1" x 2" x 0.5" product will cost £5k. i guess i need to pay some fraction (share) of their cnc or whatever machines cost in their factory. i think i'll better diy (protoyping), buy some very good quality clay and sanding machine, find a good ABS resin or something and start moulding. £1k as a starting cost is more than enough i think (including R&D).

[bilko]

Haven't followed the full thread, but have you thought of Vacuum moulding, very easy once you've made the initial prototype case and you can have complex designs and curves e.t.c.

[Mechatrommer]

yes i've googled quite a number of methods for producing mould. i've seen the vacum method it only can replicate the top part or the model (master) and then later on maybe i can spray resin in it to create the product. but i think clay method is more appropriate and preferable if we want to build complete 3D model. since the product in my mind is enclosure with certain thickness. i have to take care both exterior and interior (to place the pcb). with vacuum method, maybe i can only get good exterior, but interior may looks like a spaghetti.

this guy using silicone rubber, but i think its not as rigid as i want, i need to find more appropriate resin for the mould... http://www.b9robotresource.com/molding1.htm one of the material for building?... lego blocks! no need big cnc

[daedalus]

How many do you need, and what stage are you at in terms of taking this to market?

stage=prototyping/testing. quantity? estimated initial = 100 units (i know, dont reply, just laugh it up)

Stick with rapid prototyping at this stage.

Do you have a finished mechanical design for the case, or a napkin sketch? (are you looking for someone to do design work for you?) Designing cases for injection molding is not trivial, so you might be best finding someone who can assist on the design front.

let me do the design, to reduce cost i'm still CADing it.

Thats fine, you can do pretty much whatever you like when it comes to rapid prototyping. RP can let you get the kinks out of your design very quickly. If you want a recommendation, www.shapeways.com are very cheap and pretty easy to get started with (lots of community support).

That said if you want to inject this part in the future, there are a lot of extra design constraints with regards to part shape, wall thickness and geometry that you will need to follow in order to make this with an injection mold. Personally if it were me I would not worry about this, get the shape right with RP, then approach protomold (or similar) and get them to make the necessary changes. If you are dropping serious change on tooling its worth a few hours design consultancy to optimise your parts/hour, and they will have the experience.

If you are prototyping / doing pre-production units for user testing, then I would suggest rapid prototyping...

thanks for the advice. i think i will go this route.

Next up are prototyping injection mold shops, such as http://www.protomold.co.uk
To be honest this kind of question would get many more answers on cnczone.com then here, as its really more of a mechanical engineering question.

thanks for the link, i will look to it.

After that comes "proper" injection moulding, expect to have to sink in around £5k for the mould, and commit to 20-50k units purchase order.

i just dont get it. building a mould (from aluminum alloy i guess) for a small ~ 1" x 2" x 0.5" product will cost £5k. i guess i need to pay some fraction (share) of their cnc or whatever machines cost in their factory. i think i'll better diy (protoyping), buy some very good quality clay and sanding machine, find a good ABS resin or something and start moulding. £1k as a starting cost is more than enough i think (including R&D).

You are talking about a throwaway short run mold out of aluminium, which will wear out fast, and require a lot of install / setup time. I was costing a proper multi-part steel mold that would be good for large scale production. This has a LOT of machining and engineering in it as its designed to produce parts quickly and in volume, so for instance:

multiple moving mold parts, so you can have undercuts (needed for parts that don't have a single separating line).
ejector pins so parts don't require an operator to run the machine
inserts
proper mounting hardware for the machine (so its quick to set up)
cooling tubing
engraving for your labelling
Textured surfaces machined into the mold to give your part the desired grip
multiple cavities to shoot more then one part at a time
This all adds to the engineering cost

Also just because your part is small, doesn't mean the mold would be, generally you would just put multiple part copies in the mold. This is for cost purposes, as the manufacturer pays the same running time costs when your mold is in their machine whether it makes 1 small part a pull, or 20.