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?

  • charigo197@alien.topOPBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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:

    1. 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…
    2. 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.