

Ask HN: I have an idea but I need help. - towndrunk

I have a case design for the iPhone 4, and possible other phones too, I would like to have made and then market. However, I don't know where to start.
I assume I need to have a mold made and proper drawing done. I will also need someone to mold them for me. Where do I start?
I have googled and found a few sites that help with product development but I'm from the software side and this is all new to me. Any help would be appreciated.
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brk
What is the case made of, and (if you can share), what makes it unique from
the 10,000 other cases out there?

Depending on the material, manufacturing may consist of injection molding,
milling, vacuum-form, or some combination of 1 or more of those.

You'll likely need a CAD engineer to do a proper drawing for it, depending on
the primary molding method. It's been about 4 years since I last did something
like this, but the general process was something like:

1) Design and model rough prototype. This was my own time/effort and about
$500 in materials (for a custom server bezel).

2) Take model to a local machinist/engineer to have CAD work done and produce
initial prototypes on a Haas mill - $5000

3) Take CAD drawings and such to local low-volume production house to have
initial small run of units made, at a cost of ~$250/ea.

4) (I never actually got to this stage in this project). After stage 3, you'd
generally do a field test looking for whatever properties you did or did not
expect from the case. Does it stay on, does it wear/damage the phone, does it
survive a drop, does it affect the signal, etc. From here you'd likely have
CAD work done for a mold ($5,000 - $10,000, IME) and have an actual mold made
($10,000- $100,000, IME) Depending on complexity, number of parts, tolerance,
etc., this can vary widely. Once all this is done, it's usually $1-$3/unit in
volume (10,000 +), but again all this varies widely on a number of factors.

Very generally speaking, you're talking about probably a $30K _minimum_
investment to get your first 1,000 or so unit. Then you have to sell or
distribute them.

~~~
towndrunk
Thanks for the info! I'd rather not say what makes the case unique at this
time but I have not seen anything like it on the market yet. I have a
prototype almost complete that I have kind of hacked together using parts from
other cases and some custom made parts of my own. I wonder if its possible to
license the design to an existing case maker?

