Re: focus group question for new products

eternalsquire@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Tim,

After studying this, I have a question:

It seems to me that I should basically have a standard design with
options. I could then post the drawings as a webpage for people to
look at and specify those options. It will be a while before I can
consider making one-of-a-kinds for people, but standard specs and
stackable configurations I could do on a JIT basis.

Would that be acceptable for now until I could afford greater
sophistication?

I actually found your aluminum scrap thread on rec.crafts.metalworking,
and I think it's pretty much hopeless to mill "standard" boxes out of
aluminum ingots and make money.

I mean, frontpanelexpress has the advantage that they start with a
sheet of the final thickness. Even a front panel with a lot of holes is
still 50% of the original material - enough of a difference to matter
for large scale production but truly negligible for small-volume stuff.
OTOH you will be milling away 99% of the original block and you truly
have to be creating unique value to make this worthwhile. At that point
the energy cost of melting down all the scraps to start over again are
probably more than the inflated retail cost of a die-cast or extruded
box.

I think you've got to concentrate on quick-turnaround custom stuff.
Just my opinion. And think about doing more than just boxes (although
boxes with holes is probably a not-too-hard-place to start from.)

Or think about a way to do custom sheet-metal operations (shearing,
bending, curving, punching, etc.) in a semi-custom way, taking orders
over the web. I know that locally, most of the "sheet metal" shops
really do almost nothing but HVAC ducts. I know that you already got
your milling machine and don't want to sink money into sheet-metal
stuff, but I think there would be a real market for custom sheet metal
stuff in the same style as frontpanelexpress and expresspcb. You'd
definitely have to sink several thousand dollars in tools and
(particularly) punches/dies but at least to me this would be far more
satisfying than spending hours milling boxes out of ingots. (How many
have you done? Gotta be dull. Of course if you're doing this on ingots
that you melted scrap into, you'd hit the occasional hard chunk and
void just to liven things up!)

Tim.

.

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