Dear fellow startup entrepreneurs, hoping someone can point me in the right direction! I have been reading countless articles about going “from prototype to production” for hardware products, but they all cover such basic, high level topics.

What I haven’t been able to get details on is how to actually conduct the step of going from a working prototype (e.g. arduino, 3D printed parts, motors, etc) to optimized part selection for mass production (e.g. custom PCB with just the microcontroller, picking the right voltage converters, the wires, cheaper motors, etc.)…

I have a rough idea of steps such as Design for Manufacturing (DFM)/Injection molding/FCC Certifications/etc… but what I don’t get is how to go from off the shelf parts I’m getting off Amazon to better scalable and cost-effective versions for mass production?

My thought is that I should ideally have a pretty much final prototype of the final parts that will go into production before I pursue any sort of manufacturing.

Is that something I can do myself, or who do I look for with that sort of help?

  • Mother-Barracuda-107BEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    There’s a level of control you have over the design. For something like a custom PCB with a microcontroller…if your asking this post your not going to be designing your own PCB. I’ve done it in college for simple circuits. Your prototype should be a “proof of concept” then you work towards the final version by making small improvements. You’re going to need to document your requirements very well and be able to have things like cad designs if you want an enclosure made. Custom PCB can get very expensive.

    • charigo197OPBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Thank you! Yes, proof of concept is designed in CAD and functionally working via 3D printing, off the shelf hardware, Arduino based software I programmed. However, it doesn’t make sense to ship an Arduino in each product because the cost of an Arduino is high since it comes with a plethora of I/O that for a broad set of use cases.

      So migrating to a purpose-driven board seems to be pretty standard. Yes, I believe I would want to get help on that, as the time it would take me to learn PCB design and part selection might be much longer than I could afford.

      But at least the scope of that part is clear.

      But for things like DC motors, AC to DC converters, even down to a particular capacitor or switch… how do you go from off the shelf parts to an optimized set of cost effective parts?

      • MysteriousTopic1BEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Where do you currently buy those parts? I’ve bought most of my electronics components from places like digikey, mouser, etc. a lot of times they have many components available to choose from.

        • charigo197OPBEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Combination of Digikey, Amazon… I’m starting to look at mouser and Alibaba as well. I use McMaster Carr for hardware components. My two thoughts are:

          1. they’re not good for mass production because they have a markup. However, if I find a good product through them, I’m sure I can just reach out to the manufacturer of the parts… however…
          2. picking the right part is a bit tough. For example, let’s say you want to step down from A/C to DC voltage. Well, I see transformers all over the place in terms of price. And while I can certainly come up with constraints such as what’s the input voltage range and output voltage and current range, I can’t help but wonder if I’ll be making a mistake picking the wrong thing. And for DC motors, honestly I thought they were supposed to be super cheap, but on Amazon they’re usually $10-$15 and even then I can’t find one with my torque requirements. So on the one hand, I thought 12-24V DC motors were way cheaper (maybe incorrect assumption), and on the other hand they’re hardly cheaper than similarly sized stepper motors… which is confusing to me because I thought stepper motors were generally much more expensive.

          So either my expectation of how much they cost is wrong, or companies usually get really cost effective suppliers that I can’t see from my own searching.