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Ask HN: What can you realistically manufacture in your garage?

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271–280 of 428 posts

Re: Ask HN: What can you realistically manufacture in your garage?

#271
You can manufacture metal-core PCB LED modules and fixtures with your starting mentioned capital. For power, you can either do an on-board solution or provide external power drivers matched to your LED layout.

Bare unbranded extruded aluminum fixtures can be had COTS and cheap, and you can either get a board house to design boards for you, or link up starboards to populate the fixtures. A small SMT oven can be had for starting at $500 out of China, though making an SMT oven to solder components to a metal PCB is as simple and cheap as a couple of half-silvered halogen bulbs in a workshop fixture, and a reflective metal top replacing the cage. Due to the nature of metal-PCB rework and how it basically ignores thermal profile recommendations, don't worry too much about following a specific thermal reflow profile on the first reflow attempt, just make sure you're getting hot enough at a decent-but-not-blistering speed to ensure all solders down, and then back off the heat immediately and allow the board to cool down. Adjust the height of the board from the light fixture or adjust exposure time or both as necessary to deal with soldering issues.

Plastic stencils that match your LED/component pad profile/layout are easy and cheap to manufacture (or buy pre-made.) Solder paste is fairly cheap (though there are some that get expensive, like the indium-bearing solders.) Most components are relatively simple to hand-place as long as your solder stencil job is properly-done and the components aren't too tightly-packed together and tiny, though small high-speed dual-nozzle pick and place SMT machines can be had for around $5K ($2500 or so used.)

I suggest looking into servicing the UV market, as that is the market that is blooming. The pandemic has boosted the need for disinfection-capable UV LEDs (specifically UVC,) and also this becomes a boon for other markets, like fluorescent mineral photography, minerals location (things like scheelite are easier to find via their glow when excited by UV radiation at certain wavelengths.) UVA is also showing some experimental results at disinfection, and despite the need for more power to achieve the results, UVA LEDs are much more efficient than UVC, and much cheaper to obtain, so there might be potential there as well if more research is performed and validated.

Alternatively, you can go the simpler route of being an assembly house instead of a manufacturing house, buy fixtures, and pre-populated boards that are designed to mount in said fixtures, make working units, sell those. I did precisely this with another person, literally out of their garage, making aquarium lighting for a while - LED strips, screws, extruded aluminum heatsinks, plastic 'lens' inserts, power wire with switch, water-sealing grommets, power supplies, extrusion end caps. If you work hard, make the right development decisions, and advertise effectively, you can easily grow into something that is sustainable and rewarding.

Re: Ask HN: What can you realistically manufacture in your garage?

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a program that's easily accessible (not behind lawyer language) that DoD sponsors: We'll buy you a CNC machine, a laptop and a bunch of bar stock on our dime if you produce these parts as per these quality requirements by this date and of this quantity. If we're happy, you can keep the equipment for your next DoD project and you'll get a priority as an experienced vendor (that we invested in).

The SBIR program is essentially what you describe… though with a research bent. Virtually zero red tape with a Phase I grant (apart from the application itself).

I did one once and it was a huge PITA and a very slow timeline. The free money part was nice, but the overhead and timeline mean I’ll probably stick to other funding sources in the future. If your founding team has extra PhDs and you want to pay them to do “research” it might work.

Re: Ask HN: What can you realistically manufacture in your garage?

#273
post #13

The legality should interest you. I saw someone have their small business shut down by police because they were running it out of their basement. It wasn't the noise or pollution (which realistically are the nuisances you're going to be inflicting on neighbors) but the excess cars parked and delivery trucks coming and going down the street. One neighbor ratted them out. The problem with the space isn't really the cap…

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: What can you realistically manufacture in your garage?

#274

I've given this advice elsewhere, and I'll give it here. Go look at the small business initiatives by each branch of the U.S. military; many are now posting lists of open contracts that you can bid on for an incredible array of things. Browse through those lists and find something you can build. I really believe the U.S. military is in the midst of a large scale transfer of military spending from traditional large de…

I've been IN this space for a while and I can tell you while we are trying, it's not a clear cut as you make it seem.

For the most part there is no more low hanging fruit like you would see in movies like 'War dogs' etc... simply because Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budgets are basically gone, and that's where a lot of the fast money was.

Now, you need to know what you're doing because you're competing with the companies that survived the last few decades and live off of these smaller SBIR/STTR/OTA funding lines

To be clear this is not what Palantir and Anduril do. Both groups have professional and skilled proposal writers and very deep technical policy expertise when it comes to winning (and defending and contesting) awards and doing it in a way that will ensure that their products can get an Authority to Operate and actually work

Re: Ask HN: What can you realistically manufacture in your garage?

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what legal issues are we talking about here? What is not legal about running a business out of one's basement, and what law were they "ratted out" for breaking?

compressed gas storage, flammables, chemical storage, hot work, etc are often governed by local law over and above needing a property zoned for light industry.

And if you run into any problems with the above that damages the property or other properties, you will be uninsured, and/or sued (and no liability cover).

Re: Ask HN: What can you realistically manufacture in your garage?

#276
post #155
post #75

I convert old photo negative enlargers to UV enlargers for printing with alternative processes (cyanotype in particular). It doesn't take much space and I do it out of my small European town house basement. Which also serves as my photo lab for demonstrations.

That's neat. What do you use as the source? A bank of UV LEDs? Never really thought about that but can you get larger "flashlight" style UV-spectrum LEDs from cree/etc? Of course you need to diffuse it and fewer larger elements are harder than more smaller elements but the output power is probably higher with the big LEDs, and I seem to remember some of the alt-processes are quite insensitive (like, leave it outside…

There are UVA flashlights with insane output already in existence. Cree does not make UV but Nichia does and has some of the best 365nm high-output LEDs out there with some of the lowest visible light output/generation. Another contender is Prolight. I have one of their 60 degree UVA LEDs in a light I use for mineral exploration, it will make things glow from almost 50 feet out, but it also has some considerable visible light generation that interferes with detecting weaker fluorescence.

If you want a HUGE UVA bank, look at Wild Fire. They make UV LEDs for party places, like cosmic bowling nights, and such. One of those could likely be easily adapted to your purpose, though it might be a little pricey.

Re: Ask HN: What can you realistically manufacture in your garage?

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Look at the US immediately after WW2. Huge power imbalance between USA (sole holder of all nuclear arms), and the rest of the world. So ... yeah, kinda proves your point.

Nuclear weapons were developed by the Soviets before the end of the 40's, so it was a very narrow window where the US was the sole holder of all nuclear arms (about five years).

Five years is an eternity though. The major factor was more likely we didn't have the capacity to produce a large number of nuclear weapons to tip the balance

Re: Ask HN: What can you realistically manufacture in your garage?

#278

well, you can manufacture a gun [0] from materials procured from your hardware store. Of course that would likely be illegal in many juridictions first to manufacture, then to sell. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Luty#Firearms_design

With CNC machines and/or 3D printers, you can make much nicer guns than Philip Luty could pull off.

Re: Ask HN: What can you realistically manufacture in your garage?

#279
post #6

I have a dream of producing custom recumbents. I don't know where to get thin-walled pipes, but a start capital is roughly as you have described.

Local metals dealer? But at this point carbon fiber is pretty easy to manufacture. For a bike frame the hard part would be design optimization and stress calculations. It might even be easier once you have the molds. I'm not really sure I understand why some upstart carbon bike company hasn't cleaned up given how inexpensively some of the no-name carbon parts from china are (and how they appear to be at least as good…

I see some high end custom jobs where they swapped some of the carbon fiber with some kind of coating on some kind of styrofoam. Its much more bulky to get usable strength but its not that heavy and it makes no noise.

Re: Ask HN: What can you realistically manufacture in your garage?

#280
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd do a lot of research in the market before starting a food business at home. Rules and regulations are pretty intense and if you're selling stuff for people to consume it usually has to be prepared in an approved and inspected kitchen, which is very difficult for home chefs. It's not impossible but prepare for a _ton_ of roadblocks. Most folks end up renting time in commercial kitchens that take care of crossing a…

We've spent about $50k getting going, but we are on a farm so have options others don't. Our equipment was $10k, the rest went into refrigerated containers we turned into a kitchen grade dehydration space, prep room, coolroom and storage. I'm fortunate to have a sister in the food retailing business who was our first customer. We started dehydrating lime slices to use up the excess limes from our yard and control fru…

> rest went into refrigerated containers we turned into a kitchen grade dehydration space, prep room, coolroom and storage.

I need to do something like this (I'm in Fiji). Do you happen to have any pics or videos showing your dehydrator and prep room? I assume you used Reefer containers.

BTW what does dehydrating limes have to do with fruit fly control?

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