Ask HN: Anyone have experience outsourcing plastics design/manufacturing?

I’m heavily involved with production at my company including mechanical design and electronic fabrication.

In what quantities are you planning to order? How long do you plan to support this product? Are you cost sensitive?

I've made my own molds for vacuum formed plastic parts, and you can make an homemade machine to do simple parts that way. This is a pretty inexpensive route to go but it's also limited in what you can make. If you're creative you can build a decent prototype with vacuum form plastic and machined plastic parts. This can be a good route to go during the proof of design phase of a product.

Nowadays, for a demo product you can also look into 3-D printers for prototypes and small runs of your designs and this is probably what you should do before going into production.

For production volumes you need to find a "injection mold company". Google the term and you'll get a list.

I'd talk to matt_the_bass first if I were you though. He's in the biz and took the time to respond.