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Comment by kweks | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious about your pricing ranges - they seem to be vastly different to what I've experienced over the years (in both hard+soft molds for ABS injection).

Our 2-piece "high-run" tool, built out of tool-steel cranked out its 1M iteration a few months ago before we retired it. The tool cost 6k USD to produce.

Our 2-piece "low-run" tool, of a larger physical size cost ~10k USD to produce. ( For the curious - https://i.postimg.cc/MT8RT50P/tool.jpg )

These prices also included the model prep (IE, taking an STP of the final product, inserting the ribs, internal structures, closures, etc required to make a real product) and tool design (Modeling the tool itself gates, etc etc).

Perhaps it's the complexity involved, as injection-molding can scale from small parts to giant parts, but our pricing experience seems vastly different.

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I've never encountered a high volume mould tool that was less than $50k. In addition to being two piece is it also a low complexity part, e.g. just a few straight faces with pretty lose tolerances? I'm still amazed you got it that cheaply - where did have it made?

I should have stated above that I am neither an injection moulding expert, nor even a mechanical engineer. My experience is as tech lead for years of projects needing injection moulded parts, so I've worked through options with mechies, recommended things for purchase etc. Would be very to happy to learn of cheaper ways of getting stuff made!

My experience ties with the parents, not this.

I've ordered many high volume tools that were way less than 50k, more like 5. Things in this world have vastly changed in the last 2 decades. Places like Xcentric Mold, Xometry, Fictiv, Baro, etc. all offer very good quality tooling production and molding, very quickly, and the line between soft and hard tooling is much more blurry now. A lot of the advice others are posting here re: injection molding is true for 20 years ago, but doesn't really reflect the current state of the market.

Our manufacturing (tool design, machining and production) is based in Guangdong, China. We have strong ties (15+ years working relationship) with the factory, which may have some pricing impact.

The tolerances on the high-run part are non-critical (but still need to match the other part for a seamless ultrasonic weld). It's got curved surfaces, and the surface texture was EDM'd on.

Likewise, not at all an expert - but have about 10 injection-moulded products under my belt; I just got back from China pricing out two new projects tooling projects. My email is in my profile if you ever want to reach out!

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