Very cheap molded enclosures?

I had a die made by

Punching is always cheaper than drilling, even one hole at a time.

-- Regards, Carl Ijames carl.ijames at verizon.net

Hello Carl,

Thanks! That seem to be a good place to get started. I like their flame logo on the home page. $2.50 a pop would blow the budget, even half that would. But maybe this can be done somewhere on an automated press, especially since precision isn't such a big concern for this job.

But I wouldn't discard drilling. Considering how cheap that is on circuit boards there has got to be a way. Worst case one could have PCBs made with no traces on there, just the holes, if that is cheaper.

Regards, Joerg

Your welcome. I know $2.50 is too much for you, but that was for 50 pieces and punching isn't their real business, diemaking is. I let them do the punching for the convenience. A local rubber company does punching for us on other stuff for about 1/2 that, on much larger gaskets, so I'm sure you could get it well under $1 with much less than your 10K per year (make the die big enough to do 4-8 lids at a time, for starters, whatever the press will stand). Now that I have the die I'm going to our local company for the next run. We also do some boxes with LED displays where the LEDs are on a PC board behind a hole in a metal box, with a stick on label on the outside. The label has solid color regions, all the lettering, and clear windows over the LEDs. We punch holes for switches to stick through. Sounds great, but, in 100's for a

-- Regards, Carl Ijames carl.ijames at verizon.net

Probably not as much as you think - they still all have to be cut to length by somebody, or by an automatic machine that somebody would have to invent and set up. :-)

And black irrigation tube would be a lot more opaque than a straw. :-)

One of my buddies in high school had an old player piano at his house, and all of the little rubber tubes were cracked and falling apart, so we replaced them all with plastic aquarium hose - it was also fun cutting 88x 1.5" tubes to reconnect the read head to the manifold. :-)

It was also fascinating working with the centering mech - there was a cat whisker at either edge, connected to proportional vacuum valves, that turned a motor that physically moved the whole carriage (as needed) to keep the roll centered on the head.

Cheers! Rich

Maybe you should check with Guy Macon's group. ;-P

In article , Rich Grise wrote: [...]

I've used a about 6" long rod to bring the light from a LED on the PCB out to where it can be seen. It works quite well. The rod just has to line up with the LED when the unit is assembled. It doesn't bring ESD into the PCB.

Joerg,

I've recently used these electrical junction boxes for an electronic project:

This was for devices that will be left out in the rain and chained around street posts for days at a time, and must survive casual attempts at deliberate destruction, such as being jumped on by neighbourhood kids etc.

I fitted a short PVC pipe in the input port (as a handle to attach the chain to) and drilled the lid for an IButton socket and LED. They come with a variety of port options. The inside is just the right size to make a 2xAAA battery holder a tight fit in the base, leaving plenty of height for a circuit board.

Price was $AU4 each for 30, pretty good, about half the price of the cheapest low-volume pricing on Jiffy boxes and the like. You'd get a much better price in volume from Clipsal. Their molds are all made by CNC I suspect, at least they provide full 3D CAD drawings, so for a sufficient volume could perhaps turn a special, such as a version with no ports.

Clifford Heath.

Good advice, though I think I'd try to make 500 for $7500.

In any case, you don't want a product like that that only sells 500 per year. If it fails in the marketplace, forget it. If it succeeds, go buy the proper tooling. Consider it "forward pricing" or a marketing experiment.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Hello NT,

This would make identification of the lit LED tricky from a distance and for people with slightly impaired vision (folks won't always have their glasses on while using it).

I did think about a larger version of a bar graph row. But then I realized that these kind of fell from grace in the audio gear world and became expensive. There it's mostly LCD now. I could go LCD but that is totally cost prohibitive unless you are doing a million units a year.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Rich,

Ah, the old days. I remember repairing telex machines in the 70s. These were rugged but when something broke on an old Lorenz we often could not get a spare without paying some exorbitant price. So we had to re-invent things. Lots of fun.

Then we bought a very old and neglected piano. Pre-Edison, so it had 'candle illumination'. Everything was wood, leather and cloth. That was also a fun restoration project. Afterwards it truly sounded like one of those uprights in the old saloons.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Carl,

Sounds familiar. I priced out translucent labels 15 years ago and still remember that sticker shock. We then used the silk screening route.

I strongly believe there is a market and that many products never come to fruition because the enclosure costs are breaking the deal. So there should be a healthy market. I really don't know why box mfgs don't offer boxes with some standard size holes in them for switches, potmeters, LEDs. Then they could offer plugs for those holes that you don't want and it should be the often cited win-win situation.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Clifford,

Those are a bit too utilitarian for this project.

I have scoured our hardware stores for anything that might be useful since electrical boxes are very cheap in the US. At least those blue plastic ones which you can buy in bulk as a 'contractor pack'. But there wasn't anything suitable. Another option would be to look in the toy department of stores like Walmart for something suitable, still have to do that.

Regards, Joerg

Hello NT,

Probably will but PCB costs are quite low. It definitely must be no more than two-layer, maybe even single layer.

Usually consumer goods show the way here. There they attempt to squeeze out every last penny. I was a bit surprised when I opened a modern TV set and found that the main board was a rather thin phenolic. Same for some smaller hand-held gear.

Regards, Joerg

And, I think it's not unethical to put up a website with a very prominent, "***COMING SOON!!!***" kind of thing, with your description and prelim specs and stuff like that. And welcome inquiries, and all that, of course.

Of course, it'll be a little hard to show any pictures, since you haven't got a box yet. ;-P

Cheers! Rich

Hello Frank,

Nope. One can always design a circuit board so they line up with whatever the enclosure demands. It's probably what we are going to do if we can strike a deal with a company that uses a suitable enclosure for something totally different.

Well, I guess you haven't yet lived through a venture capital start-up phase. It's rough out here. Neither you nor I make such decisions, the guys with the Armani suits do.

These tester didn't look too appealing except one. But how do you know I didn't buy and rip stuff? I have ripped numerous parts that are used by rock bands and found some that might work. Some less than $10, BTW. Plus toys, plus...

Now go and tell that to the VC. There is a whole lot more than those $10k involved. Right off the bat you can't even test market stuff without a slew of agency approvals. And, you know, that costs. Since you live in Europe you should know how bad bureaucratic hurdles for start-ups can be. WEEE and things like that.

Regards, Joerg

"Joerg" schreef in bericht news:wxZnf.40021$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...

That's a daft idea. The holes would always be in the wrong place, or even worse, slightly misplaced. The plugs would cost 2 cents which you find too expensive.

Products come to fruition because some companies have the guts to get on with it.

If you plan to make a 10k-20k/year of these boxes, you should at least have the guts to buy 1000 cases at *whatever* it costs to see if your product flies. You are *making* it an impossible project, because you want to make profit on the first box.

Did you buy a few of those cable testers? No, of course not. You're not even prepared to buy them, rip them apart, to 'massage' your own creativity, and to see what happens, to see if it sprouts other ideas. You only see elephants that crush your boxes, you only see 9V batteries that you don't like, warranty claims, stickers that were too expensive, and what have you.

Make 1000 boxes for $15 a piece, and sell them for $5. You can save a buck if you drill them yourself, using a steel template/rig, if that makes you sleep better. The $10.000 loss on the first batch is just an investment.

Hello Frank,

The original question I posted was for a low cost type molded enclosure. There were some excellent replies and have found a few possibly viable solutions. Working on it right now.

With investors you have to be up front not just about the solutions but also about obstacles. It gives you a lot of credibility. I don't do this for the first time. Chances are, at the next meeting one or more of them will be quite smart and ask about such an obstacle. One has got to have a good answer. Or as the scouts say, be prepared.

Believe it or not but the toughest business questions I fielded during prior finance group or board room discussions hardly came from people with an engineering or MBA background. They came from physicians and attorneys. I kind of liked that and ended up developing the closest relationships with those who had prodded me with the more difficult questions.

If we can make it for the target price it will fly. Like other stuff before that.

Setting up a web site should be done once you can actually ship finished goods and not before. I know that even some semiconductor companies see that differently and put products up there that they didn't yet have but their credibility has taken a nosedive because of that. I think we all know who those are.

Regards, Joerg

"Joerg" schreef in bericht news:jg0of.33695$q%. snipped-for-privacy@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...

Well, if someone else makes the decisions for you, why post the question?

Sure, go and tell the VC. Of course there are other costs, but if you continue to think in obstacles rather than solutions or oppertunities, this thing is never going to fly. Tell that to the VC as well.

Okay, make 500 then, as Speff suggested. The $7500 materials investment allows you to *give* them away, instead of selling them for $5. Why isn't that website up and running, with the product information and registration form for a free product sample? You have to spend money to make money, not the other way around. That includes wasting money.

Hello Frank,

It's about keeping risks low. If there is a solution that's close enough why not use that? That's what I am hoping for and where I now possibly have one in sight. It would mean laying out the board to that enclosure but that is no big deal. Once it flies another layout will be peanuts in cost.

If you go all out and barge into the market the cost can be significant. We had to do that on one device. A bit more mechanical but close. It became a success but that company had to sink 1/2 million into it before it turned a profit. That's not in the cards on this one.

'tis not how it works anymore. Not since the dot-com bust. You have to show them your numbers and then they tell you whether to stick around or catch the next flight home. So, the numbers have to look good. Really, really good these days.

Regards, Joerg