moulding plastic

towbar

Have being asked to help a friend who wants to develop a specialised plastic container and am hoping the forum can point me in right direction re cad drawings and moulding.

It's for a small item about 12" diameter 18" high with a top piece and we need to build a prototype followed hopefully by a production run of up to 1000 units. It does not need micro accuracy nor will it be used in a harsh environment.


Any suggestions what type of plastic moulding company we are looking for. What plastics we should use and where we might get cad drawings done in Ireland?
What are the options in Ireland and UK for moulding?

Thanks in advance

MrSausage

Send me your details I can help re cad drawings and rapid prototyping. Will also give you advice re manufacturing and if necessary in touch with good toolmakers and moulders.

newbie4

I am new to boards, but also I would like to start buisness creating pvc products, and a type of ducting, am in the buisness of installing this products, but reckon we should be making these products in Ireland. Has anyone any idea of the cost of these extrusion machines, moulding machines, do they have to be run on 3 phase electricity, where they can be purchased, can we purchase rebuilt machines, all help greatly appricated

Offy

newbie4 wrote: »

I am new to boards, but also I would like to start buisness creating pvc products, and a type of ducting, am in the buisness of installing this products, but reckon we should be making these products in Ireland. Has anyone any idea of the cost of these extrusion machines, moulding machines, do they have to be run on 3 phase electricity, where they can be purchased, can we purchase rebuilt machines, all help greatly appricated

It would probably be cheaper to have them manufactured in China. Manufacturing costs are high in Ireland.

enda1

For only a thousand units, might be difficult to get a big manufacturer on board. The major cost of your activity will be the tool price and you need to get it right first time so spend time and effort in the testing and prototype stage as tool modifications can quickly destroy your profitability.

The tool you could get made in China (as long as you don't really care about IP protection). Whereas you should do the moulding in the UK where there are a lot of plastic moulding companies which will provide relatively low volume production runs.

Try a company like Nifco for example. They are Japanese so expect decent quality, but quite small in the UK. If they can't help, ask for references from them.

Good luck.

newbie4

Offy wrote: »

It would probably be cheaper to have them manufactured in China. Manufacturing costs are high in Ireland.

I want to produce a product in Ireland. I didnt ask where it is cheeper to produce it. What I want to produce is too bulky to transport cost effictive.
Is there any national pride out there. Someone wants to produce something in Ireland and the best ye can come back with is "da chineese can do it cheeper"
Considering the state the economey is in that reply is pathetic
is there any one out there with something positive

Turbulent Bill

newbie4 wrote: »

I want to produce a product in Ireland. I didnt ask where it is cheeper to produce it. What I want to produce is too bulky to transport cost effictive.
Is there any national pride out there. Someone wants to produce something in Ireland and the best ye can come back with is "da chineese can do it cheeper"
Considering the state the economey is in that reply is pathetic
is there any one out there with something positive

Nice attitude. The reality is that simple, mass-produced items are almost always cheaper to produce abroad (transport included). There's nothing to stop you producing in Ireland, but competition is so cut-throat that you'll be killed on pricing.

Bespoke or heavily-customised products are a different story, as is the prototyping of new designs like the OP was proposing. All of this is better done closer to home.

newbie4

Its not my attitude, when i see a comment like that it make me mad. There was no question about wheather mass produced, the competition, etc. It was china can do it cheeper/better, Ireland has to produce something if we are going to get out of the mess the country is in. we need solutions. Not imports.
It starts with an Idea
The product I want to manufacture is not presently manufactured in Ireland . It is quiet bulky so a container load from china may not be the most profitable option
I hope to find some second hand injection moulding equipment, I have a company that can make mould, Am not sure about extrusion machine, Still early stages

Offy

newbie4 wrote: »

Its not my attitude, when i see a comment like that it make me mad. There was no question about wheather mass produced, the competition, etc. It was china can do it cheeper/better, Ireland has to produce something if we are going to get out of the mess the country is in. we need solutions. Not imports.
It starts with an Idea
The product I want to manufacture is not presently manufactured in Ireland . It is quiet bulky so a container load from china may not be the most profitable option
I hope to find some second hand injection moulding equipment, I have a company that can make mould, Am not sure about extrusion machine, Still early stages

No matter what you might think the facts remain the facts. Labour cost and manufacturing costs in Ireland are high. It does not matter that the product is not already manufactured in Ireland, the consumer wants the best possible deal no matter where its manufactured. If a consumer goes into the local hardware and sees two of the same product then nine times out of ten they wont even look at where it is manufactured, they will buy the cheaper product. That means your competitors will put you out of business. Your attitude is not the attitude of someone that runs a successful business. Business is about making profit. Period.
Ive worked in manufacturing since 1990 and I can honestly tell you that India and China will copy any good design and flood the market with an almost identical product (often of low quality) at a much lower cost. The average Irish consumer wants the best deal possible but rarely looks at where a product is manufactured. What industry uses the product? If the building industry then your going to have to export as the building industry is crippled at the moment in Ireland. Whatever chance you have of Irish consumers buying Irish manufactured products you have no chance of that loyalty abroad.
For Ireland to compete we would have to lower wages to the same level as China and India. Nobody in Ireland will work for that kind of wage, they would starve if they did. Reality has to come into it somewhere. Even having molds made in Ireland is expensive, if you go down that route be prepared to made losses. If you can afford to run a business at a loss then go right ahead, its your money at the end of the day.

Offy

PS as you can see from the date I joined this site Ive been here for some time now. In all that time all the advice Turbulent Bill has given has been good advice. We are not saying these things to make you mad, we are saying them because you asked for advice and the advice we are giving is good solid advice.

Offy

I'll go even one further, post a link to a similiar product and I will give you a breakdown of what you would need to achieve you goal.

MrThrifty

Just a comment there re: getting stuff manufactured in Ireland versus say China. While it is clearly cheaper to do so in China, clearly resolving any technical difficulties or posing queries is much more difficult because of the language and time-zone barriers. It is also difficult to audit a Chinese company without actually visiting them which introduces additional costs.

I've experience in this area and would recommend one of the following options for prototyping a product:
1) use a European company (e.g. Irish, UK, German) and work with them to finalise the design or
2) use an Irish 'middle man' company who already work with established Chinese companies.

In the case of the European company, when the product goes to full production the company will be keen to keep the business from a pricing point of view and may even have manufacturing plants in China for high volume production. In the case of the 'middle man' company, while one might naturally be wary of middle men, they do in this case add value and their 'cut' tends to be minimal. Should anything go wrong, then you have a man on the ground here who the buck stops with. Plus they're going to be working with properly audited companies, the quality of which is good.

Turbulent Bill

newbie4 wrote: »

Its not my attitude, when i see a comment like that it make me mad. There was no question about wheather mass produced, the competition, etc. It was china can do it cheeper/better, Ireland has to produce something if we are going to get out of the mess the country is in. we need solutions. Not imports.
It starts with an Idea
The product I want to manufacture is not presently manufactured in Ireland . It is quiet bulky so a container load from china may not be the most profitable option
I hope to find some second hand injection moulding equipment, I have a company that can make mould, Am not sure about extrusion machine, Still early stages

There's nothing unpatriotic or defeatist about getting something manufactured abroad, it's just the reality of business. You can still create wealth and employment by basing your company here, employing local installation/sales people, keeping R&D in the country (very important for IP protection when using Chinese manufacturing) etc. - keep the high-value stuff at home. As an extreme (ridiculous) example, I could tell you to get teams of Irish people to hand-build the ducts, which would employ lots of people but bankrupt the company instantly. Whatever business model you have has to be sustainable, hence all the advice you're getting here.

I wish you the best of luck, but you need to be clear-headed about the business rather than just the product. Your local enterprise board should be able to help out with business plans etc.

monzadesigner

In just a few words vist this www.advanceddesign.ie Irish product development company.

Experts in design, run by a product design engineer / mould tooldesigner. Have there own in house product development and prototyping SLA equipment. And most of all a proven track record for getting products to the market.:cool:

Dutchie

Hi towbar i have worked with this company www.firstpolymer.com, They are based in Athlone and work very closely with Athlone IT who have a lot of polymer experience.

firstpolymer offer advice and expertise on R and D, production, training, marketing etc.

My company is currently being funded by EI through their innovation voucher program working with DCU who are caarrying out R and D on a product concept I have designed (not polymer based)

There is plenty of advice out there both semi-state and private.

It really annoys me that people's first reaction when it comes to manufacturing in Ireland is to 'get in made in China'
We have serious talent in this country some dormant, some active. Lets utilise these expert individuals' competencies and get this country out of the mess its in.

OP best of luck with your project, i hope it works out for you.

newbie4

At last some one with something to say about Irish manufacturing.
At the end of the day buisness is about profit, but we can challenge the imports by working smarter, brand our products we can be competitive
If not ireland could be the detroit of europe.
Thes low cost locations are not stupid, they will start challenging for the R&D and where are we then

Offy

Dutchie wrote: »

Hi towbar i have worked with this company www.firstpolymer.com, They are based in Athlone and work very closely with Athlone IT who have a lot of polymer experience.

firstpolymer offer advice and expertise on R and D, production, training, marketing etc.

My company is currently being funded by EI through their innovation voucher program working with DCU who are caarrying out R and D on a product concept I have designed (not polymer based)

There is plenty of advice out there both semi-state and private.

It really annoys me that people's first reaction when it comes to manufacturing in Ireland is to 'get in made in China'
We have serious talent in this country some dormant, some active. Lets utilise these expert individuals' competencies and get this country out of the mess its in.

OP best of luck with your project, i hope it works out for you.

I received training from First Polymer and it was very good training. I have a degree from the AIT. I was also a participant on whats called the WMEP (Midland West Enterprise Program) which was also funded by Enterprise Ireland, the Dept. of Ed. and BMW so I know a bit about the vouchers you are talking about. Enterprise Irelands spec is not to make profits for companies, it is to create jobs in Ireland. They are keen on manual assembly lines which create loads of jobs but not loads of profits. We do have serious talent in this country and we also have high labour costs. The reality is that because of the high cost of living in Ireland we cannot compete on a manufacturing level with China.

Pope John 11

Interesting thread. Does anyone know if rapid prototyping is confined to only polymer or plastic type products.

If you are thinking about a rubber or PVC type product how would you shape it or mould it. In other words what process would you use?

What companies make rubber or pvc type products?

carveone

MrThrifty wrote: »

Just a comment there re: getting stuff manufactured in Ireland versus say China....

I've experience in this area and would recommend one of the following options for prototyping a product:
1) use a European company (e.g. Irish, UK, German) and work with them to finalise the design or
2) use an Irish 'middle man' company who already work with established Chinese companies.

I was going to PM MrThrifty directly on this but the thread is still active so it's probably more polite to just post!

I was investigating setting up my own company to manufacture a USB device. I'd believe that general manufacturing (PCB and pick and place) operations would be cheapest in China, although I'd be happiest if a place in Europe could do it too. After all, it's not free to ship China to Ireland.

However, initial inquires to someone I know who works in semiconductor operation in Ireland were met with disdain. Essentially he said that noone in China or Europe would deal with me at the numbers I had in mind - initial run in the hundreds, production volume 1000s depending on sales.

This is rather depressing and frankly hard to believe. How does anyone get started in product development if someone wants €1m+ for 100,000 parts?

I'll keep searching boards.ie and see if anyone else asked the question too...

carveone

Searching boards is useful - essentially there has been advice to the extent of doing a patent search and then doing up prototypes. Which is useful I guess.

I've no intent of patenting anything - I've been careful enough to pick combination of unpatentable ideas. eg: if you made a usb keyboard or something that looked like one, you can't patent that because a USB keyboard is part of the USB HID specification. You might have to pay the USB organisation of course, but that's expected.

However, here's an example of the patents people get away with: Password booster takes a "seed" and produces a "super password". Yes. It's called a hash. Duh. Atmel have stuff to do that already...

No wonder people make software these days. Assuming you can create something people want - the manufacturing costs are zero, the risk is minimal, shipping is zero etc. Maybe I'll do that instead

Cheers.

Turbulent Bill

carveone wrote: »

I was investigating setting up my own company to manufacture a USB device. I'd believe that general manufacturing (PCB and pick and place) operations would be cheapest in China, although I'd be happiest if a place in Europe could do it too. After all, it's not free to ship China to Ireland.

However, initial inquires to someone I know who works in semiconductor operation in Ireland were met with disdain. Essentially he said that noone in China or Europe would deal with me at the numbers I had in mind - initial run in the hundreds, production volume 1000s depending on sales.

This is rather depressing and frankly hard to believe. How does anyone get started in product development if someone wants €1m+ for 100,000 parts?

Plenty of companies will deal with low-volume orders, but will have minimum order values. USB widgets are generally cheap so the minimum order quantities tend to be large.

I'd suggest getting a cheap PCB made which you could debug just to check functionality. Production is a much smaller problem than getting a good idea working properly.

carveone wrote: »

I've no intent of patenting anything - I've been careful enough to pick combination of unpatentable ideas. eg: if you made a usb keyboard or something that looked like one, you can't patent that because a USB keyboard is part of the USB HID specification. You might have to pay the USB organisation of course, but that's expected.

Patents are the cornerstone of IP protection - why wouldn't you want one? Take your idea, frame it with a patent (in the most general terms) and you'll be on a much sounder footing. If you don't want the patent fees then don't tell anyone about it until it's working!

Pope John 11

Pope John 11 wrote: »

Interesting thread. Does anyone know if rapid prototyping is confined to only polymer or plastic type products.

If you are thinking about a rubber or PVC type product how would you shape it or mould it. In other words what process would you use?

What companies make rubber or pvc type products?

Sorry guys, has anyone any idea of going about the above

Turbulent Bill

Pope John 11 wrote: »

Interesting thread. Does anyone know if rapid prototyping is confined to only polymer or plastic type products.

If you are thinking about a rubber or PVC type product how would you shape it or mould it. In other words what process would you use?

What companies make rubber or pvc type products?

Never used it myself, but as far as I know rapid prototyping machines can only use particular types of polymers. The machines effectively print layer-on-layer to form the final 3D shape. The idea is just to prototype the shape of the design rather than use the intended material.

Rubber and PVC products are usually moulded or extruded. The tooling costs for this can be huge, hence rapid prototyping is used to check the product shape before the tools are produced. Lots and lots of companies make these, depends on the industry.

Finally, don't post the same query in multiple threads!

monzadesigner

Check out http://www.advanceddesign.ie/
Can prototype polymers and metals for small parts.

Pope John 11

monzadesigner wrote: »

Check out http://www.advanceddesign.ie/
Can prototype polymers and metals for small parts.

Yes, its good to see Irish companies doing this sort of stuff. What about rubber made products, any Irish companies out there that make rubber products?

monzadesigner

Get an SLA prototype made of your physical part, then make a silicon rubber mould, then use the silicon mould to produce your rubber parts. Ask www.advanceddesign.ie

Pope John 11

monzadesigner wrote: »

Get an SLA prototype made of your physical part, then make a silicon rubber mould, then use the silicon mould to produce your rubber parts. Ask www.advanceddesign.ie

Cheers for that monzadesigner, we will be in contact.

Pope John 11

MrThrifty wrote: »

Just a comment there re: getting stuff manufactured in Ireland versus say China. While it is clearly cheaper to do so in China, clearly resolving any technical difficulties or posing queries is much more difficult because of the language and time-zone barriers. It is also difficult to audit a Chinese company without actually visiting them which introduces additional costs.

I've experience in this area and would recommend one of the following options for prototyping a product:
1) use a European company (e.g. Irish, UK, German) and work with them to finalise the design or
2) use an Irish 'middle man' company who already work with established Chinese companies.

In the case of the European company, when the product goes to full production the company will be keen to keep the business from a pricing point of view and may even have manufacturing plants in China for high volume production. In the case of the 'middle man' company, while one might naturally be wary of middle men, they do in this case add value and their 'cut' tends to be minimal. Should anything go wrong, then you have a man on the ground here who the buck stops with. Plus they're going to be working with properly audited companies, the quality of which is good.

Thrifty,

Do you have any the names of such companies. Feel free to PM me with further information. I think this is the correct way to go too.

carveone

Turbulent Bill wrote: »

Plenty of companies will deal with low-volume orders, but will have minimum order values. USB widgets are generally cheap so the minimum order quantities tend to be large.

I'd suggest getting a cheap PCB made which you could debug just to check functionality. Production is a much smaller problem than getting a good idea working properly.

Patents are the cornerstone of IP protection - why wouldn't you want one? Take your idea, frame it with a patent (in the most general terms) and you'll be on a much sounder footing. If you don't want the patent fees then don't tell anyone about it until it's working!

Well, as regards patents, my product consists of what most USB products do - a processor/memory/flashstore. Ie: A computer. Any value add is in the software. I've been against the concept of software patents (and lawyers who sue you) for years and I feel I'd be hyprocritical for me go down that road.

On the other hand, my gut understands the disappointment if some big company ripped off my idea and was able to outship me. That would annoy the crap out of me :rolleyes: But hey, that's capitalism.

I've done some more research and there are a number of middle man companies for PCB manufacturing at least. They take orders and group them into blocks for factories. Itead is one that does this, seeed is another. Both have insanely low prices due to pooling orders.

Seeed is interesting because they have a kinda open source hardware manufacturing thing going. There are others like PCBPool in Shannon that do good low volume work too.

One interesting thing I saw is a product from Seeed which was a cheap digital oscilloscope. Even Seed, based in China, clearly used a media player case for their first revision of the product.

As others have said on this forum, it's the initial tooling that's the killer and, prototyping aside, you cannot get away from that fact with plastics manufacturing. You can however see what existing tooling is out there and use it to your advantage, assuming there isn't a big "Creative Labs" stamp on it

carveone

Turbulent Bill wrote: »

Never used it myself, but as far as I know rapid prototyping machines can only use particular types of polymers. The machines effectively print layer-on-layer to form the final 3D shape. The idea is just to prototype the shape of the design rather than use the intended material.

I note that the Dublin based hacker group, TOG.ie, have a 3D polymer printer which could be fun to play with if you ask them nicely!

Turbulent Bill

carveone wrote: »

Well, as regards patents, my product consists of what most USB products do - a processor/memory/flashstore. Ie: A computer. Any value add is in the software. I've been against the concept of software patents (and lawyers who sue you) for years and I feel I'd be hyprocritical for me go down that road.

On the other hand, my gut understands the disappointment if some big company ripped off my idea and was able to outship me. That would annoy the crap out of me :rolleyes: But hey, that's capitalism.

If the added value is only in the software, why would you want to do a hardware development (at least at this stage)? You could probably bodge together some existing USB modules, evaluation boards for specific components etc. as a proof of concept. It might be the size of a desk and look like a dog's dinner, but at least it would demonstrate how the idea works. Then you could licence the technology to a HW manufacturer, licence their HW and market the product yourself or develop new HW from scratch.

As for IP protection, it boils down to what kind of business model you intend using, but it's worth clarifying your approach early, e.g., open-source SW on custom HW, patent protection etc.

carveone

To keep this ontopic - I'd still love to hear from people who have figured out the plastics and enclosures end of things. I gather that many manufacturers will do inserts for their mouldings and post CNC production which can reduce costs. Making an actual injection mould does not look cheap at all - be cool if there was a CNC house that could do it.

Turbulent Bill wrote: »

If the added value is only in the software, why would you want to do a hardware development (at least at this stage)?

When I say software, I mean microcontroller source code. It may be PIC or ARM assembly, but it's still software!

It might be the size of a desk and look like a dog's dinner, but at least it would demonstrate how the idea works.

Oh it'll look like a dog's dinner anyway! Using prototyping boards linked to LCDs and USB always looks like a rat's nest.

As for IP protection, it boils down to what kind of business model you intend using, but it's worth clarifying your approach early, e.g., open-source SW on custom HW, patent protection etc.

Yeah, I'll agree with that. Knowing what licences are available and the difference between copyright and patenting etc can be useful. I'm sure there are many engineers out there working contract on embedded systems who should know more about these things. I for one intend to use experience gained on this project to get contracts on other people's projects.

For example one can have a set of private libraries that you reuse for different projects - there's only so many (correct) ways to read serial input on a PIC for example. When you give this code to your employer, do they own these libs or do you. Can you reuse them? I've seen problems with this in the windows world - it's good to be very very careful! The right way to do it is to licence the libs while retaining copyright - eg: Stellaris graphics libs for ARM, Microchip USB libs for PIC - same concept. Employers can get very upset about you doing this until you explain how their costs are massively reduced. Do they want you to write a USB lib from scratch? "Sure thing. Cost you 30 grand though..." This is way off topic though :rolleyes:

PS: The hyper australian engineer on EEVBlog wrote a blog about bringing ideas to market that might be of interest (EEVBlog #106)

med1

hi just reading this post i also am looking to get plastic items manufactured my problem is they are boards approx 1 meter long by 15 cm high approx with a depth of 3 to 4 cm .They will be for outdoor use .
I am looking at about 100 units only and i need to keep the price a slow as possible .
Has anyone any ideas

Irish_Elect_Eng

There a are lots of Irish Companies that you can go to for design help:

A couple of examples.

http://www.apdesign.ie/

And some for prototyping and production

http://www.keyplastics.ie/

These companies will also have the contacts and partners to get your product made abroad if that is the route that you need to take.

arynne

MrSausage wrote: »

Send me your details I can help re cad drawings and rapid prototyping. Will also give you advice re manufacturing and if necessary in touch with good toolmakers and moulders.

Hi Mr Sausage,

I'm looking for cad drawings to create a flat-pack design for a hen coop. Any idea who might be able to do this for me? Thank you.

Andrew Rynne

eeguy

arynne wrote: »

Hi Mr Sausage,

I'm looking for cad drawings to create a flat-pack design for a hen coop. Any idea who might be able to do this for me? Thank you.

Andrew Rynne

Send me a PM. I can help you out.