Product Manufacturing

>asking a business related question on Jow Forums
Assume you want to manufacture a simple product design with no moving parts. We'll use a spoon for this example.
What's the most affordable route for manufacturing a product these days? China was the go-to for a lot of product manufacturing, but now that there are tariffs would it be better to look elsewhere? Is manufacturing in the USA affordable enough to be an affordable option or would some other shithole nation be better?
Which materials are most affordable? Metals? Resins?
Are 3D printers just a meme or can they compete with Chinese manufacturing as far as scale and affordability?

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wut u say?! We talk BUSINESS here so buy LINK (1000 oey) or go back to plebbit!

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Yeah I'm just really bored with playing the zero sum game of musical chairs in the bear market and want to actually do something productive. If I make it in crypto I'll take the money and run, but I still want to actually do something. Whatever gains I get will likely go to funding business ventures.

Kek is with me \o/

Additive manufacturing spoons isn’t really a good application in my personal opinion

Not sure how to answer without knowing the industry and goal. I saw this video on a place in nyc with a bunch of 3d printers doing contracts to make figurines and stuff.

Might need to seek a mechanical engineer or research it more yourself

China is still the cheapest option if you need anything made in volume.

Domestic manufacturing is good if you want a small batch made quickly with higher quality.

It depends on how many you need to make. If you're talking one or two, a 3d printer might work; but if you're talking about selling a product, a 3d printer would in no way be economically feasible, and it would take forever.

Even though the molds are expensive and it's an up front cost, once you have the molds paid for, injection molding is (relatively) dirty cheap, no matter what country you have it done in.

really depends on your product. For example: mass production will never be optimal using a 3d printer unless each product has quirks or is unique (aka not mass produced). there are tools and methods available for varying solutions using 3D printers as an integral part of your process, but it is all going to boil down to the materials you can use and the solution you're aiming to provide.

>China is still the cheapest option if you need anything made in volume.

commie faggot

I hope you get hit with tariffs

>Material?
Well what does the product do? Who is it for? Does aesthetics matter?
>China was the go-to for a lot of product manufacturing, but now that there are tariffs would it be better to look elsewhere?
Unlikely. I'd need to have a look at what industries are being Tarriff'd but I'd assume that manufacturing of this sort isn't substantially affected by it.
>Are 3D printers just a meme or can they compete with Chinese manufacturing as far as scale and affordability?
Depends on the product, the durability required, how specialized it is.
Basic rule of thumb is if a product endures high mechanical stress or needs to be manufactured in large numbers - don't 3D print use injection molding or something.
If it's a low volume product (i.e. you can wait and don't need to make thousands) and doesn't endure much mechanical stress - 3D print.

Is he wrong though?

>puts politics before profits
>thinks he's a capitalist
>thinks he's gonna make it
WEW LAD!

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>Does aesthetics matter?
No. Minimally.
It needs to be manufactured in large numbers so it doesn't sound like 3D printing is ideal at all.

Then it's injection moulding as mentioned above by smart user. 100K for an expert artisan to make the the tool (aka mould) for your product out of a solid hunk of steel, but after that dead cheap to stamp out 100s.
Now tell us what your product idea is so we can tell you why it won't work.

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>That pic
>Prominently shows a half naked mans back
>Romanticizes the horrors of war as if it's something cool
>Pretends the vast majority of soldiers in those armies weren't slaves

Faggot.

that dude is really hot though

I run a technical services business in the manufacturing sector and let me tell you, you have absolutely no business in this industry. Go learn a trade/spend 5-10+ years in a field before asking stupid questions on Jow Forums about running the show.

Often the stupid idea ends up making someone rich, even though it's a stupid idea...
AOL anyone... Worldcomm... Toys R us... stupid idea's that insiders knew were going to fail, but made lots of people rich

>Galileo's Gambit
Holy shit, really!?
You're not an insider though mang

That's not what I'm telling you. If you need to ask if 3D printers can seriously compete with advanced manufacturing, you aren't ready to walk in to a meeting with worksafe advisors to explain your directives and methods, or with your clients to discuss QA and their bad batch with porosity out of intended ranges. Among the field-specific things you'll need to know about your employees benefits, rights and entitlements, as well as all of your accounting requirements. Trust me, this isn't an area that you just wing it in as a business owner, it will legitimately never happen without knowing what you're doing on a professional level. Investor, maybe (barely), yet even then you run a big chance of failure. This game isn't a as simple as you might think and you're better off looking elsewhere for your money, before you fuck your financial life or the industry/employees/clients right up.

*snap*

t. meche with years of 3d printing and injection molded parts design experience.
youre talking bullshit. i can design and print out parts that will sustain stresses magnitudes larger than injection molded parts. rotation molded parts are another matter, but they are also expensive as shit.
your questions are fucking retarded. every project, environment, market, etc. has different requirements and different answers to your questions. there is no one universal answer. thats why engineers exist and are payed well. if you could easily answer such questions for all products, they wouldnt be needed.

Fair enough. Can't blame me for trying to oversimplfy it for ignorant OP here though.

Suck my balls and quit huffing your own farts. I'm looking for manufacturing options before seeking a manufacturer. I'm not interested in DIY unless there's reason to think it would be a better option. lol you really think I would have China pump out 100,000 doodads without consulting industry professionals and writing a solid business plan?
>you aren't ready to walk in to a meeting with worksafe advisors to explain your directives and methods, or with your clients to discuss QA and their bad batch with porosity out of intended ranges
Not sure if you are LARPing here or being a cringeworthy wagie, but if I need somebody to do that stuff, you can drop a resume into the pile and I'll have somebody get back to you.

>larps as an engineer
>can't answer simple questions based on the given product example
I'm sure you can 3D print the most amazing spoons mankind has ever witnessed at a lower cost and at a scale larger than all of China could manage, you hipster fag.

>asking Jow Forums instead of based Martha Stewart
marthastewart.com/264329/how-to-get-your-product-made-finding-and

Except he's not larping. He's right and I was wrong. You can put force on 3D printed objects *depending on the shape* far in excess of injection molds for obvious reasons you'll see when you actually hold a drink bottle or a plastic bath toy and apply pressure to them.
You're not getting an answer because you haven't provided enough information about the product, it's uses, it's market, the quantities you need it in.

you cannot even comprehend the variety and complexity of various manufacturing methods. your questions are fucking retarded, because you are fucking retarded.
pic related, small snippet of injection molded part im currently designing for a large project.

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this. gtfo salty nocoiner. bussines is fo gramps

everyone telling you you're being ridiculous, yet still denying it.
I literally have multi-million dollar contracts at hand mate, take the advice and promptly move on; you literally have no idea what you're on about and its obvious to anyone who does. imagine what potential clients may think, you're going no where in this industry like this.

1. 3D printing is not easy
2. It is only good for prototyping, or MacGyverism
3. The end product is much worse than injection molding
4. You need to be gud at CAD to have anything remotely useful

That said, you can make money with it if you're good, but from your post I'm thinking you're not.

Not sure if US companies are able to produce products as flexible as the chinese companies did.

And yes 3D printer is just a meme.

Did you do all of this within the Part Designer?
How do I get good with CATIA?
I've been doing youtube exercises with generative shape design but if it comes to my own projects I always get errors of some sort.

the outer shell is made with shape design, the rest is made with part design.
experience and doing projects is the probably the only way to get good. always try to optimize shit. also, knowing at least some programming comes in very handy with catia, since youre basically using a gui to code a part with in-built (and rarely custom made) functions.
theres no getting away from errors. working with catia is 70% avoiding and getting around errors. thats why i personally prefer sw, although theres a lot more freedom when working with catia.

What the profit per piece-you can go to a general manufacturer and get it made but you have to make a decent profit to justify the cost. I know a guy who designed fishing lures and had a place that made aircraft parts make them and he made good money.

Instead of hiring computer faggots find a good tool and die guy to figure it out then have the overpaid worthless keyboard maggots model it.

>knowing at least some programming comes in very handy with catia, since youre basically using a gui to code a part with in-built (and rarely custom made) functions
I didnt even know that's a thing.
But then again I've been only using CATIA for half a year for uni projects.
For how long have you been doing this?
How's the situation with being outsourced to pajeets?
I study mechatronics but I'm not good enough at coding for embedded systems stuff and robotics. I am currently doing my internship at a 3D printing lab.
Would becoming a CAD drafter be possible? I imagine most companies would rather hire mechanical engineers over me.

who do you think designs tooling? who do you think writes cam programs for cncs to make those tools? who do you thinks checks moldability? who do you think checks the stresses and design viability?
let me guess, youre a 50+ yo boomer whos angry that hes too much of a retard to learn to work with those computors, or a "hands on" brainlet whos only good to screw bolts where hes told and how hes told to.

learning how to code really helps with organizing your design tree, especially things like modularity, which helps immensely when some design aspects inevitably change. also, pic related is a short macro i wrote in catia. this simple script saved me few days of work sometime ago.
ive been working with catia for about 10 years now, engineering for about 15 overall.
pajeets are mostly only good with stuff that doesnt require much knowledge or thinking. industrial designers in my company have all been outsourced, but its not easy to outsource actual engineers.
as a mechatronic, you should be able to fill any position meche could. if youre not confident in your mechanics, find pdfs of shigleys mechanical engineering design and nortons design of machinery. i always have these two on my desktop and browse through them if i have free time (and im not wasting time here or reading some shitcoins whitepaper).

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Cool thank you for your insight.
I will look into programming macros now.

i suggest just to learn coding in general. it doesnt really matter what kind, most of its quite similar anyways.
if youre doing mechatronics, try starting with arduinos, move on to bare metal pics/ atmegas and then move on to stm32 of smth similar.
i actually tried getting into embedded coding professionally (ive been doing it as a hobbyist for years now), but just couldnt stomach the drop in salary going from professional to basically junior level. im afraid i got pigeonholed in my area.

hahaha faggot. stfu

op just wants to get some questions answered, not waste years of his life with tradie trash like you. go back to your cigarettes, scratch tickets and energy drinks

Yeah I know basic C and I did some visual basic in highschool. Apparently macro scripts in catia are written with VB and I thought it had no real world application.
I'm going to do some arduino projects over the summer. We did some projects with stm32 in embedded classes but I had no idea what was going on half the time