Manufacturing Analysis
This product, like most contact cases, is made of injection molded plastic. This process has a steep up-front cost, but the part that will be created will be good for millions of parts.
The design has a spinning wheel in the top of the cap, which must be made separately from the rest of the parts. The bottom part of the lid snaps into the top to hold the wheel in place, demonstrated by the greenarrow.
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This snap on part makes the piece manufacturable, but it increases assembly costs. It is a very simple assembly, with just one motion and one step, which means that the costs are lower than a complex, multi-step assembly.
one simple lid, the base piece, one snap on base, one spinning wheel, and one lid with a snap on feature and cut outs.
This product will be made entirely out of polypropylene plastic, a thermoplastic that is common for injection molded parts. Many contact case manufacturers already use polypropylene. In 2017, the price for polypropylene in China was a stable 2,500$ per ton according to plasticsinsight.com.
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The manufacturing factory that I contacted said that the mold would cost 2,200 USD. The parts would cost 0.15 usd/set, which means that each contact set would cost 0.15$ to make. They also said that the minimum quantity they would make is 1000 sets. This manufacturer did not include packaging, so I would need to send it to be packaged, which is an additional manufacturing cost. This is useful for deciding what the price of the contact would be. I would have to sell it for more than 0.15$. I could sell a pack of 12 for 6 dollars, a price of .50$ each. That would make me $4.20 on each pack.
The cost at 1000 is 0.15$ a set. The cost at 10,00 is 0.15$ a set. Anything lower that 1000 would be made using 3d printing at the makerspace. The makerspace charges 2$ an hour, and the print takes about 6 hours, making each one cost 12$ to make.