On Tue, 3 Jul 2007 12:56, Matthew S. Hamrick wrote:
Also.. to follow up on what Adrian recently said.. The tech shop also
has a CNC milling machine. I'm no expert, but I believe that the idea
is that you put a CAD file in one side and take out a completed part
out the other. So... if you have the CAD files for a case, you could
feed them into the CNC milling machine instead of the 3D printer and
viola! aluminum case.
Jim Newton at the TechShop also mentioned he's looking into getting an
injection molding machine. I've seen a couple of these sorta 1 shot
injection molders. You use the CNC machine to create your mold, then
you pour plastic pellets in the top, press a button and an electric
motor turns the screw that forces the semi-molten pellets into the
mold. So.. you could have any number of different cases made for your
Neo.
My "back of the envelope" calculations for the cost are:
Fixed Costs:
Mold Design Time 5h $0
Mold Milling Time 3h $75
Variable Costs: (per production run)
Mold setup 1h $10
Variable Costs: (per case)
Plastic Pellets (1/10)h $3
So assuming a CAD file for the NEO case were to magically fall out of
the sky, perhaps as part of a program to seed a third party ecosystem
(*hint*hint* Sean, are you going to be in the bay area soon?
*wink*wink*) The cost per case for a production run of 10 and 100
identical cases would be:
10 cases: 9h, $115
100 cases: 18h, $385
Let's say that I'm terribly impressed with myself and I want to pay
myself $65 / hr. for my time, the price goes up to:
10 cases: $700
100 cases: $1555
But I'm not going to sell them myself. I'd rather sell them through
SparkFun or even GumStix.com (but I don't know if either of these guys
would be interested.) So, I'm going to add a little bit of margin.
This is a risky business, so I'm adding 35%.
10 cases: $945
100 cases: $2100
Nathan and/or Gordon are going to want a margin as well, but I'm
thinking I'm going to offer them a low-risk proposition: "just put the
SKU on your website and I'll handle the fulfillment." So I'm going to
argue them down to 7% margin. So in other words, I'm going to pay them
a commission for every case they sell. That fee would be:
10 cases: $65
100 cases: $147
We're not talking about a lot of coin, here. From a business
perspective, the reward of $147 for selling 100 isn't that great. It's
probably not going to pay for Nathan or Gordon's time to setup the SKU
in their system. But there's always eBay...
Let's say sales taxes are an additional 8.5%:
10 cases: $86
100 cases: $191
Shipping and handling:
10 cases: $90
100 cases: $900
End Price:
10 cases: $1186 ( $118.60 per case )
100 cases: $3338 ( $33.38 per case )
So... the question is...
a) is it possible to convince Nathan or Gordon to sell these things
through their websites for $65 - $147?
b) is there actually a demand for 10 or 100 of these after-market
cases?
c) is there a "one size fits all" design that will satisfy everyone
who wants an after-market case?
So, I'm not saying I want to get into the business of making after-
market Neo cases, but someone who was thinking about getting into this
market would do an analysis just like this. So... if there was a solid
demand for 100 cases, it's possible the price could be brought down to
about $35-$40.
This is definitely an interesting analysis of a set of costs associated
with this kind of business.
I think the costs could be a bit cheaper for the end user depending on
material and costs to build the molds. But then again, I have not
actually sat down and worked it out yet. /grin
I do think there is a market here though..
--Tim
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