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Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

simonberens.com

341–350 of 427 posts

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

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means just because you now have an interest in politics, it doesn't mean you will be able to convince anyone of your points of view, or have any impact in whatever level of politics you're joining.

Neither does baking a cake mean you'll get to eat any - but it's clearly a better cake-obtaining strategy than deciding not to bake a cake.

The thing is that taking an interest in baking a cake doesn’t actually feed anyone. If you’re not going to spend your time baking (i.e. actually get involved in politics, to drop the metaphor), then what’s the point?

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

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes a lot of sense if you agreed on a price per unit before everything was locked in. If their profit is a flat price minus expenses, lower expenses is more profit. I ordered cups and did specify the thickness (based on a reference) of the plastic but didn’t specify how thick the boxes they shipped in should be. Guess what happened!

> It makes a lot of sense if you agreed on a price per unit before everything was locked in. If their profit is a flat price minus expenses, lower expenses is more profit. That's the thing that makes no sense to me. Wouldn't it work better for everyone involved, including the manufacturer, if they come back with a "here's exactly how we interpreted your spec and what materials we're using, including cases where we pi…

Yes but as OP pointed out, that requires you (or them) to spec it all out. And if you do, that’s how it works, and that’s probably exactly what happened when you buy any well-made product that was designed in America and built in China.

But a whole lot of manufacturing relies on the OEM not just for the production but also some of the engineering. They probably don’t communicate to you all of the little parts you didn’t spec because they don’t think you want them to.

A friend of mine worked for a major vacuum company that has 3 well-known lines. The very high end line is manufactured in the USA. The mid range line is fully designed here but manufactured there.

The low end line they basically tell a Chinese OEM what it should look like and certain parts of it and let the OEM fill in the blanks. OEM makes vacuums for other brands too, they know what size wires to use where, why waste money on American salaries speccing all the tedium?

OP is making something fundamentally different than what exists in some ways. It’s a lamp, but obviously it has some considerations other lamps don’t.

Also hardware (as OP pointed out) has long development cycles during which prices can actually fluctuate significantly. You don’t want to lock in cost plus pricing or you’ll end up buying components from their sister company at astronomical prices. You might not have time to source 100 different parts from Chinese OEMs yourself. Etc.

The whole thing is a complex guessing game. I’ve only manufactured approximately the simplest objects imaginable (stuff like gaskets and cups) and found it to be far more complex than I thought it would be. Manageable but something like a lamp I could see being a lot of unexpected work. I did not see, for instance, how much effort I had to put in speccing out the packaging for simple objects but then I found myself repacking things here.

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

#345
Have you taken surface temperature measurements of the heat sink? A ~600W hot plate suspended at eye level is no joke, and certainly dangerous if it fell over or someone tripped onto it. For that matter, have you taken any temperature measurements with the unit on its side, to see what would happen if it was knocked over?

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

#346
post #228

I would be quite scared to have such a monster lamp near me indoors. I mean, 60k lumens can cause temporary blindness, disorientation, and potentially retinal damage. It's near the welding arc territory at this point.

It bounces off the ceiling and so is massively diffused.

You definitely don't look at it directly.

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

#347
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1200 is a lot, and it would be a straight dealbreaker to me as well. But I also noticed it draws 580W, which is a lot too. Besides not wanting to waste the money, I doubt the lamp will last 5 years (not 5 years of projected use of XX minutes per day…). 580W converted to heat on a small disk will take its toll.

~100 lumens per watt is rather poor, especially given the cost. It's the same as a standard LED lightbulb, and that includes the miniature AC voltage converter. 150lm/w would make it at least a cut above domestic lightbulbs. 200lm/w would make it a premium product.

The 'wasted' electricity is turned into heat, which should be welcome by their target customer base.

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

#348

"As someone who generally stays out of politics, I didn’t know much about the incoming administration’s stance towards tariffs, though I don’t think anyone could have predicted such drastic hikes." Except those with ears and/or eyes.

[flagged]

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

#349
This reminds me of the Keyboard.io blog, where they documented their experience with the same kind of issues: https://shop.keyboard.io/blogs/news/day-743

Notably:

> When we got back, we watched as the laser engraving technician printed out a copy of our alignment template, deleted all of the guide lines from the file, imported the legends into the laser engraving software, and proceeded to try to eyeball the correct label placement.

> Going in, we were annoyed at how far off the legends were. In retrospect, it’s astonishing how good his manual placement was.

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

#350
580 watts is more than my entire server rack. By a good amount too. I run a UPS, firewall appliance, two switches, two APs (over POe), and a NAS with a 36 HHD disk shelf. All of that clocks in at 380 watts steady. Just some food for thought.
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