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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

#291

Post by [deleted] »

bambax wrote: post #264
theodric wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would reckon the simplicity of the objects and the single material helped. If you specify 304 and you get 304, they can really only cheap out on tooling, and that'll cause them pain rather than you. HN loves downvoting. It's Nerd Reddit. Don't sweat it.

I tried many different suppliers, for the objects themselves and for the packaging (which involved 3-4 different parts); some were better than others (esp. regarding delays) but no one tried to take advantage of me. And I was just one guy from Europe making small batches: the ideal target for a scam. Yet it never happened; quite the opposite in fact. At some point given the cost of transport by air or by sea I tried…

[deleted]

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

#292

Post by peyton »

bambax wrote: post #264
theodric wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would reckon the simplicity of the objects and the single material helped. If you specify 304 and you get 304, they can really only cheap out on tooling, and that'll cause them pain rather than you. HN loves downvoting. It's Nerd Reddit. Don't sweat it.

I tried many different suppliers, for the objects themselves and for the packaging (which involved 3-4 different parts); some were better than others (esp. regarding delays) but no one tried to take advantage of me. And I was just one guy from Europe making small batches: the ideal target for a scam. Yet it never happened; quite the opposite in fact. At some point given the cost of transport by air or by sea I tried…

Curious what type of metal object and if you tried factories in different regions. Jewelry is pretty smooth… This 500W superlamp thing is effectively an appliance and seems quite brave for this guy to work through.

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

#293

Post by phasetransition »

lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #275
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #208

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 1…

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

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.

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

#294

Post by xandrius »

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…

Can you share some resources/books/courses to learn more? I'm interested in exploring working with Chinese vendors and it would be nice to learn from someone else before jumping into it.

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

#295

Post by mlrtime »

jasonkester wrote: post #226
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…

That's the thing that drives me nuts about buying stuff manufactured in China. They'll make this amazing Remote Control Car, with good suspension, a battery that lasts half an hour, plenty of power, and just all around amazing. But then it'll break after a day because somebody saved 1/20th of a penny by speccing this impossibly thin wire the thickness of a human hair to hook that powerful battery to the powerful moto…

You're not wrong, but there are 1000 of those rc cars, and maybe 20% have that feature you want, but everyone buys the cheapest because they don't know which has slightly better quality.

Now go with Kyosho or Tamiya and you DO know it will be best in class, but at 10x the cost.

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

#296

Post by mlrtime »

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…

>Look up what it means when they say "yes", when you're explaining something.

Is there a term for this? Because I see it in my personal life as well dealing with some low price manual labor that doesn't speak english.

Instructions often get lost in translation, the reply will be "yes" and it doesn't get done. I know they want to sound professional and confident, so saying no or asking questions is a "bad thing".

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

#297

Post by crote »

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…

> the cost of 5 SBC boards with pre-applied SMD is now so low, you might as well order 5 so you get at least 1 which works

I've had a 90% failure rate on what was supposed to be the final prototype before production. Turns out they hand-soldered the batch because the proto run was (obviously) only a dozen units - and some parts were just too tricky to reliably hand-solder.

I understand the logic as fully-automated assembly has a nontrivial startup cost, but a big reason of doing later prototypes is evaluating the manufacturing process as well. If the assembly method used doesn't match what I can expect in production runs, what's the point?

Weirdly enough the batch before this was totally fine. In the end we did get a massive discount on the hand-assembled run and managed to do all the testing with the one prototype we got working with some small rework, but it still cost us quite a lot of time and money. We would've happily paid a significantly higher fee to have them just do it properly - per-prototype cost is pretty much irrelevant during development.

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

#298

Post by 4gotunameagain »

n4r9 wrote: post #284
4gotunameagain wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am entirely convinced that the entire country of Germany suffers from Asperger's. Denmark is a bit better, maybe because they drink more ? Dunno.

As someone who's visited both countries a few times, Germany is more of a drinking culture. Wikipedia agrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_c...

As someone who has lived in both countries, the Danes drink much more in a social setting.

Maybe the overall consumption is higher in Germany, but in Denmark everyone is out drinking much more than in Germany.

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

#299

Post by phasetransition »

rxt_ian wrote: post #252

I'm curious that this story seems to be missing a big part of hardware design - certification. It seems like the design was being changed up to the minute these were shipped to customers, so it doesn't seem possible that any testing was carried out on the final design?

Given that these went straight to backers, and would have required the final die cast parts to test in the thermal chamber, they probably had not gone to an NRTL at the point the article had been written.

This product is about at the point of DVT in development flow, and therefore would be sent to testing about now. But, instead, being sent to backers.

PS, not a hypothetical circumstance for me. I've previously certified a number of luminaires under UL and CB Scheme. I was the technical chair of ANSI C136.37 for several years, and on the working groups of several other standards.

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

#300

Post by 4gotunameagain »

theodric wrote: post #259
4gotunameagain wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am entirely convinced that the entire country of Germany suffers from Asperger's. Denmark is a bit better, maybe because they drink more ? Dunno.

I have observed the same across a bunch of linguistically Germanic countries (DE, AT, CH, NL, DK, NO, haven't been to SE, didn't observe it in IS), and I thought of it as "cultural autism." Apparently "higher context" is the politically correct way to say it. Now I know!

Danish and Norwegian are not linguistically Germanic. If anything, German has more old Norse influences. And dutch.. Well, dutch is the illegitimate child of england and germany.
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