zlacker

>>sberen+(OP)
I would not advise jumping to mass production for your first deliveries, i think your story would have had less stress and more lower risk of failure of the first n (maybe 10?) units was bespoke, made lovingly by hand in a machine shop somewhere. I don’t think this is unusual advice, it matches the ethos of the lean startup, and pg’s “do things that don’t scale”.

We made our first hardware by hand, i believe we did 15 units. I remember my cofounder broke down because he couldn’t take the pressure of receiving fifteen orders and now we had to make FIFTEEN by hand, lol. But we were able to figure out SO MANY issues before mass production. And of course even then many slipped through

>>pinkmu+ou8
The product in question has a cast part. How do you do that in low quantity by yourself? Sand casting?

>>lyleja+b89
There are a number of pressureless casting techniques available. Investment casting is widely used, for instance. https://www.harmonycastings.com/ is a fancier example.

For this specific application, the manufacturing method determines the porosity of the material, and therefore the heat transfer.

CNC prototype parts will have better heat transfer than pressure die cast, and the pressure die cast will perform better than pressureless cast parts.