[sdiy] Plastic case fabrication

[Tony Clark]

> Good afternoon, everyone (please adjust greeting to your time zone),
>    How would one go about commisioning someone to fabricate a number of =
> plastic bowl-shaped cases, or really any shape someone would want? For =
> example, the case a cell phone sits in, someone designed that and =
> another guy is making them as we speak. Who are these people and how do =
> I contact them for a simple, simple half-sphere much simpler than even =
> the simplest of cell phone cases, and the only thing I would ask would =
> be flanges to drill screws into. I'm trying to avoid cutting hundreds of =
> little plastic balls you find at the Chuck E. Cheese Ball Crawl in half =
> and epoxying the guts into the bottom. Is this type of work tremendously =
> expensive to have done?=20

   My company did a plastic housing a couple of years ago and I believe 
that the cost came out to $30K.  However, it's not as simple of a part as 
what you are suggesting, so you might come out cheaper.  However, the 
typical procedure looks something like this:

   Tooling Engineer designs mold
   Tooling company burns the mold into metal block
   Surface finisher smooths out mold
   Injector company runs small test batch
   Tooling engineer checks out samples
   Tooling company makes rough adjustments (if necessary)
   Surface finisher fixes problem areas (if necessar)
   Go into production

   And let me tell you, those surface finishers are _expensive_!
   But what everyone else has said is basically true, $30K first part, 
pennies for the production runs.  Plastic is _so_ cheap after the 
initial cost!

   Tony

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