I found this out the hard way with making the Plenum Spacer, and through trial and error, well I found that manufacturing can be done in a number of ways. The 6 nylon spacers that sit within the plenum chamber are costly, you'd wonder how they're made.
My first visit to an injection molding factory. Took my sample, left them to quote me happy and returned to the office with an email.....
Excitement!
More like OMFG!!
£2,400 for the first 120. That made them £20 for each nylon spacer. Okay so that cost included the tooling, but still I'd need to sell thousands to recoup my initial setup costs.
But through investigation of process, materials, purpose and requirements, these parts are actually "turned". Still I have to pay a fair whack, because in their terms I'm only asking for 120 at a time. If we were talking 5,000 I'd be seeing a pretty decent discount.
The same applies to all the parts made for the spacer, I'm producing these in small volumes because I don't want to be caught out with hundreds of spacers that won't sell. Okay so profit is low, but leftover stock should be minimal once I stop doing them.
Manufacturing is very interesting I have to say. I actually found it rather satisfying to make something further improved over another manufacturer, especially as my first ever venture into this game.