<story><title>No, you can’t manufacture that like Apple does (2014)</title><url>https://beneinstein.medium.com/no-you-cant-manufacture-that-like-apple-does-93bea02a3bbf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hef19898</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; CNC machining at scale
CNC machining is fantastic for prototypes and pretty awesome for high margin parts like hip implants and turbine blades. It is not for consumer devices. Figure out a way to cast your metal parts.&lt;p&gt;Having a manufacturing back ground, I did extended workbench management early in my career, this is just wrong. Sure, at high volumes casting and injection moulding is unbeatable at per unit costs. At smaller volumes, not so much. Casting and moulding tools cost a fortune, and those upfront NRC are just prohibitive for small volumes. So smart CNC machining it is. Added benefit, there are tons of small CNC machining ships around that are really good at that.&lt;p&gt;Nothing to add on ejector pin marks, if you see those on the outside of your part, your part design and manufacturing &amp;#x2F; tool design sucks. No need to be a billionaire genius, just a decent plastics engineer.&lt;p&gt;But since the target audiamce of this article are start-ups, it kind of makes sense, doesn&amp;#x27;t it? Brcause how many start-up founders have a solid grasp of hardware manufacturing, design, tooling and manufacturing processes? Especially those that want &amp;quot;Apple&amp;quot; without understanding what that means deffinitely don&amp;#x27;t.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aaronbieber</author><text>It stood out to me that the author of the post is the COO at a meditation service start-up, not a manufacturing one... Unless Ten Percent Happier is making physical products that I&amp;#x27;m unaware of.&lt;p&gt;I think this guy was just musing about Apple&amp;#x27;s quality and has watched a lot of AvE and This Old Tony on YouTube and wanted to share his opinions with the world. They&amp;#x27;re not all entirely correct.&lt;p&gt;For anyone who wants to go on the whole manufacturing journey, don&amp;#x27;t miss the Linus Tech Tips video about why their screwdriver took 3 years to bring to market (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=2K5Gqp1cEcM&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=2K5Gqp1cEcM&lt;/a&gt;). And they based their design on a fully functional production-ready screwdriver, they did not start from scratch.&lt;p&gt;Going from idea to production is really, really hard. Even today, even with CNC and 3D printing and other prototyping tools. Even with all the money LTT has to spend on it (millions of dollars, as I understand it).</text></comment>
<story><title>No, you can’t manufacture that like Apple does (2014)</title><url>https://beneinstein.medium.com/no-you-cant-manufacture-that-like-apple-does-93bea02a3bbf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hef19898</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; CNC machining at scale
CNC machining is fantastic for prototypes and pretty awesome for high margin parts like hip implants and turbine blades. It is not for consumer devices. Figure out a way to cast your metal parts.&lt;p&gt;Having a manufacturing back ground, I did extended workbench management early in my career, this is just wrong. Sure, at high volumes casting and injection moulding is unbeatable at per unit costs. At smaller volumes, not so much. Casting and moulding tools cost a fortune, and those upfront NRC are just prohibitive for small volumes. So smart CNC machining it is. Added benefit, there are tons of small CNC machining ships around that are really good at that.&lt;p&gt;Nothing to add on ejector pin marks, if you see those on the outside of your part, your part design and manufacturing &amp;#x2F; tool design sucks. No need to be a billionaire genius, just a decent plastics engineer.&lt;p&gt;But since the target audiamce of this article are start-ups, it kind of makes sense, doesn&amp;#x27;t it? Brcause how many start-up founders have a solid grasp of hardware manufacturing, design, tooling and manufacturing processes? Especially those that want &amp;quot;Apple&amp;quot; without understanding what that means deffinitely don&amp;#x27;t.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>samwillis</author><text>&amp;gt; Casting and moulding tools cost a fortune&lt;p&gt;It depends very heavily on the complexity and size of the part.&lt;p&gt;Earlier in my career I worked in Medical&amp;#x2F;BioTech product development for a consultancy working with startups. We found the most cost effective route (in the UK) was to have tooling manufactured in China, but then shipped to the UK. We worked with moulding companies who had in house experience building and modifying tools, so they could make alterations to the tools on site.&lt;p&gt;Tooling for small plastic &amp;quot;clam shell&amp;quot; type products would be in the £20k-£50k region by doing it that way.&lt;p&gt;Being able to visit your manufacturing partner, as a small startup, is essential when launching a product. Too often physical product startups try to run before they can walk. You can always ship a tool back to China once you are up and running, but realistically at that point you know what v2 should be and retooling is required.</text></comment>