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Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

simonberens.com

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Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#211

Post by numpad0 »

> Due to a miscommunication with the factory, the injection pins were moved inside the heatsink fins, causing the cylindrical extrusions below.

Never done casting let alone worked with Chinese factory to ship hundreds of units but: this sounds potentially intentional at factory's end. It's plausible that these fins didn't pass factory guy's manufacturability gut DRC who would made changes thinking the customer would just give in. IIUC molding people in general don't like corners and narrow channels with no sprues and/or gas escapes. Especially the outer ring of pins appear to be exactly where they like to place sprues.

I wonder how this problem was eventually solved. The final product seem to retain the number, height, draft angles of the fins, but fillet radii appear to have increased(2mm -> 5mm?) and the entire body shows more material shrinkage at the outer edge of the body as well. Was it just no pins and higher defect rate, or something else entirely?

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#212

Post by b1temy »

This article reminds me of some of the stories in the "The Hardware Hacker" book by Andrew Huang [0], which went a bit about the author's experience in Shenzhen manufacturing some hardware.

There are a bit over similarities with the article, like miscommunications occurring or needing to specify in exact terms what is required. But I think it is slightly different now, the stories in the book was from a while ago and in shenzhen instead of zhongsan, so I am sure things have changed, and this article is more up to date.

[0] Despite the title, it is not entirely solely about hacking in the security sense. But also the traditional use of the word "hacker".

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#213

Post by sampullman »

nomel wrote: post #194
ggm wrote: post #132

This is the second article about hardware supply from China I've read and it reads very much the same, albiet in a different niche (the other one was about SBC construction) -Anything you don't specify will be done least cost, and there is no amount of "least" which cannot be chased in manufacture. The other one noted if you don't specify the density of plastic for bags, or paper for bags and packing, you get clingfi…

Working with a Chinese vendors is an adversarial first relationship, where 差不多 is deeeeep in the culture (and, from my experience, tends to survive trips across the ocean). There are professional communication/training courses for working with Chinese vendors/colleagues that spell all of this out, because it's not some secret. It's just a very different culture, with high context communication (I'll let you read what…

I did not find this to be the case, except with a few low quality vendors we ended up dropping.

It was mostly the same as anywhere else, you go talk to them in person, tour their facilities/processes, and see what else they've built.

I was warned strongly about IP theft and cost cutting, but didn't find that expectation quite met reality. It may have been that our products were mostly un-copyable, and we specified everything precisely, or were just lucky.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#215

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

carabiner wrote: post #179
chillfox wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the "no one could have seen it coming" crowd extremely tiring, they usually always say that about something anyone who paid a tiny bit of attention could see coming. It's genuinely baffling to me why business owners pay so little attention to the politics that will directly impact their business. The entire tariffs thing was incredible obvious to me (I am Australian) and I only check in on US politics for 10 m…

Did you buy options to trade on it?

My first thought too, there's a big difference between 10-30% tariffs on China on certain goods and a blanket 150% on everything.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#217

Post by BrenBarn »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #175
MagicMoonlight wrote: post #99

Selling a product you haven’t tested or built yet to members of the public, classic.

That's a pretty ungenerous take. Pushing timelines back doesn't solve the fundamental issue that you don't know what you're going to get when you submit that first large order. I've seen many situations where the samples and the manufacturing are completely different, even produced in different factories. They didn't do everything perfectly, but this looks like a normal learning curve for product manufacturing. Texti…

It's way more than just pushing timelines back. The person took $400k from people without knowing anything about how to provide what those people had already paid for.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#218

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

How did you find factories, and trustworthy ones at that, at all? I know you mentioned just being happy that the factory existed at all, but I'm doubting you just found someones email and then wired them cash?

Previous experience? Or you know someone? To me that always seems like 90% of the battle with manufacturing.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#219

Post by shadowpho »

ungreased0675 wrote: post #108
EarlKing wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find particularly galling is that he failed to learn perhaps the most important lesson: Maybe he wouldn't have these kind of problems if he hadn't outsourced his manufacturing to China but kept in on-shore instead.

I did wonder how many less issues would have popped up if the lamp wasn’t manufactured in China. Was a little surprised it wasn’t addressed.

It’s because building 500 units would be a non starter for many of them

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#220

Post by repiret »

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #91

580 watts..... :D. Why not work on cheap solutions to bring in natural light into darker parts of the house?

As someone who recently replaced a few windows in my house, I can say in no uncertain terms that spending $1200 for a lamp and paying to feed it 0.58kW is cheaper than hiring a contractor to add another window. And it works all day.
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