Injection mold tooling runs $3,000 for a single-cavity aluminum prototype tool, $12,000 to $60,000 for a production steel tool on a moderate consumer part, and $80,000 to $200,000 for a high-cavitation tool with hot runners and multiple side actions. The spread comes...
The crossover between 3D printing and injection molding falls between 300 and 3,000 units for most consumer parts, and part size is what moves it. A 5-gram clip that prints for $4.50 and molds for $0.09 in a $12,000 tool crosses over at about 2,700 units. A 600-gram...
A molded plastic part costs between $0.15 and $3.00 to produce once the tool exists, and the tool costs $3,000 to $60,000 before the first shot. Those two numbers are the whole story. Piece price is built from resin, machine time, secondary operations, scrap,...
Consumer product design services cover four things industrial design alone does not: hitting a landed cost near 20% to 25% of shelf price, designing packaging that survives shipping and sells from a peg or a shelf, meeting the safety standards your category triggers,...
The product development process runs through six gates: concept definition, feasibility, industrial design, engineering, validation, and production release. Each gate has an entry condition you must satisfy before work starts and an exit condition you must prove...
