Hi. I'm a newbie to business. I have a product idea where one component will require the design and manufacture of a small plastic part and a small metal part. By default I always want to spend my money with UK contract manufacturers. But, am I going to discover that it is pointless approaching a UK firm, in the sense that costs are going to be, well, daft i.e. prohibitive, or hopelessly uncompetitive? Anyone have experience that you can relate? Thanks. Rich
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It is completely irrelevant whether it is a UK firm, or a Chinese firm that you approach.
The cost of manufacturing your widget is usually proportional to the quantity that you ask them to make,
and the choice of materials.
But, no company, anywhere, is really going to bother with order quantities for small parts of less than 100.
It is just not worth their time and effort, setting up machinery up for manufacture of your part,
unless there is a chance of larger quantity, repeat orders of the same part in the future.
You may find a small engineering company to make a few prototype pieces for you, but that's when costs are quite often ..Daft, prohibitive, or hopelessly uncompetitive.
New product design and development, this is what I do.
( Quite often tweaking existing designs to get the future manufacturing costs down )
Chinese companies will be cheaper, but only when you have an established production run in place.
But then you have the importing costs, time delays and maybe language misunderstandings.
There is a whole list of other not so obvious aspects to consider, all of which affect the final cost.
The methods of manufacture.
A metal part can be machined from solid block, or the same functioning part can be made by using flat sheet steel, laser cut to shape and then bent into the final form.
Plastic parts cut from sheet, heat formed into shape, up to injection moulding ( expensive tooling )
The materials.
Metal part can be from stainless steel down to aluminium.
Plastic parts can be anywhere from cheap to expensive ... ABS to Nylon.
All dependent on the required working properties of the widget when it is in use.
The order quantities of parts that you can offer to the manufacturer for each batch.
Finishing.
Polished, chrome plated, colour anodised..
All of these attributes need to be decided before you start production.
Later changes will be expensive.
In reality, designing and producing a new product is a big commitment.
You have to throw yourself and your deep pockets into producing hundreds of widgets, designed and tested so they do the job without failing.
All production will have to be paid for before the first widget is sold.
While you are hoping that they will sell.
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