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
In some sense it seems like hardware has two cliffs: the handmade one, and the factory one. You need to fall off both to really know what you’re doing

>>RataNo+1ea
DFM is a skill like any other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_for_manufacturability

Some are good at designing to factory capabilities, yet others try something slick and get schooled the hard way. =3