Dear fellow startup entrepreneurs, hoping someone can point me in the right direction! I have been reading countless articles about going “from prototype to production” for hardware products, but they all cover such basic, high level topics.
What I haven’t been able to get details on is how to actually conduct the step of going from a working prototype (e.g. arduino, 3D printed parts, motors, etc) to optimized part selection for mass production (e.g. custom PCB with just the microcontroller, picking the right voltage converters, the wires, cheaper motors, etc.)…
I have a rough idea of steps such as Design for Manufacturing (DFM)/Injection molding/FCC Certifications/etc… but what I don’t get is how to go from off the shelf parts I’m getting off Amazon to better scalable and cost-effective versions for mass production?
My thought is that I should ideally have a pretty much final prototype of the final parts that will go into production before I pursue any sort of manufacturing.
Is that something I can do myself, or who do I look for with that sort of help?
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If you know an industrial engineer in the field of special machine construction, talk to him. For us, this is part of everyday life. For all these parts, there are simply manufacturers and stores that you should know where such parts are ordered or made.
Not really complex, but you simply have to know these processes and companies.
Thank you! That’s helpful…by the way are industrial engineers usually a part of an industrial design firm, or are they separate?
There’s a level of control you have over the design. For something like a custom PCB with a microcontroller…if your asking this post your not going to be designing your own PCB. I’ve done it in college for simple circuits. Your prototype should be a “proof of concept” then you work towards the final version by making small improvements. You’re going to need to document your requirements very well and be able to have things like cad designs if you want an enclosure made. Custom PCB can get very expensive.
Thank you! Yes, proof of concept is designed in CAD and functionally working via 3D printing, off the shelf hardware, Arduino based software I programmed. However, it doesn’t make sense to ship an Arduino in each product because the cost of an Arduino is high since it comes with a plethora of I/O that for a broad set of use cases.
So migrating to a purpose-driven board seems to be pretty standard. Yes, I believe I would want to get help on that, as the time it would take me to learn PCB design and part selection might be much longer than I could afford.
But at least the scope of that part is clear.
But for things like DC motors, AC to DC converters, even down to a particular capacitor or switch… how do you go from off the shelf parts to an optimized set of cost effective parts?
Where do you currently buy those parts? I’ve bought most of my electronics components from places like digikey, mouser, etc. a lot of times they have many components available to choose from.
Combination of Digikey, Amazon… I’m starting to look at mouser and Alibaba as well. I use McMaster Carr for hardware components. My two thoughts are:
- they’re not good for mass production because they have a markup. However, if I find a good product through them, I’m sure I can just reach out to the manufacturer of the parts… however…
- picking the right part is a bit tough. For example, let’s say you want to step down from A/C to DC voltage. Well, I see transformers all over the place in terms of price. And while I can certainly come up with constraints such as what’s the input voltage range and output voltage and current range, I can’t help but wonder if I’ll be making a mistake picking the wrong thing. And for DC motors, honestly I thought they were supposed to be super cheap, but on Amazon they’re usually $10-$15 and even then I can’t find one with my torque requirements. So on the one hand, I thought 12-24V DC motors were way cheaper (maybe incorrect assumption), and on the other hand they’re hardly cheaper than similarly sized stepper motors… which is confusing to me because I thought stepper motors were generally much more expensive.
So either my expectation of how much they cost is wrong, or companies usually get really cost effective suppliers that I can’t see from my own searching.
i’m a copyright minority.
You need to get a technical cofounder (I know its fucking hard) or outsource parts of your project.
Im doing hardware too as a solo founder and Im using affordable services from developers at the Fiverr platform.
The learning curve for manufacturing ready product is steep, and there are too many aspects, regulations and design requirements to be observed.
Injection molds are super expensive and can take months to be ready, so at this point any change on the product is going to increase drastically time and budget.
You are going to need technical drawings and different certifications that cost a couple of thousands of dollars tooI usually hire developers/engineers to make small tasks, see how they care and how much they know about the subject, like some kind of trials.
For example I work with 2 different 3D modeling professionals.
One is cheaper and with less experience, so I do the biggest part of editing the stl file with him and later send to the more expensive guy and with more expertise do the refinement.
Other guy is doing the PCB and another is 3D printing.
They send me all the parts and I assemble and test it at my garage and with a few users.
Every iteration helps me to check functionality, resistance and design patterns.
I guess when you get to the point where you have almost no changes between the last batch of prototypes, then you start to converting to a mass production design.
So if you are not sure about it, get someone technical with experience in manufacturing, go to conventions about manufacturing, talk with engineers and industrial designers.
Good luck!
I’m an industrial designer with over 10 years experience bringing products to market, establishing manufacturing and supply chains and scaling them. If you wanted a chat I’d be happy to take a look at where you’re at and see if I can give you a steer?
Happy to jump on a Google meet and chat for an hour.
Wow that’s really generous of you, thank you! I will DM you!
We do plastic injection molding.
If you let us source others, also okay, but details should be provided. Or you can source from otherwhere and have them shipped to us to test first, and then buy at big scale.