HN Explorer

Ask HN: How do I find a good factory?

20 points by billdough ↗ HN
I am working on some designs of a physical product to be made with plastic and aluminum. I want to put it into production and have been looking for a factory that can do injection molding, investment casting, and CNC machining, but the price quotes have been so varied, I'm not sure who to believe.

Anybody have tips on how to find a trustworthy factory for mass production of products?

11 comments

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gallerytungsten
Are you looking for domestic or overseas production? Either way, and in particular for overseas production, you may need to find an intermediary, someone who deals with a number of factories and can find the right one for your product.
billdough
either domestic or overseas - whatever can give us high quality and low price. i have currently been talking to factories in china, but our prototypes have all been made locally.

any times on finding a good intermediary? i've talked to xpicorp.com, who have seemed helpful, and i've tried pch international, but got transferred around their phone system.

kranner
Ask the Pez MP3 player guy.
lucadv
I work as a buyer in that sector (in Italy). For aluminum castings and plastic injection the bulk of the cost is about the making of the stamps and toolings. There is also a big difference wheter you are facing a production of thousands or a productions of millions of pieces.
billdough
tooling costs have ranged from 5,000 USD to 12,000 USD. i plan on visiting the factories, but the large range in prices has me unsure of how i should price my own product.

first run of production will be 5k units. we will ramp up production once we get more distribution and the product begins to sell well.

4trade
i was in this business for many years with sources of supply in taiwan hong kong and china. how to find good factory in my experience really comes down to your relationship with your counterpart on the other side. how can we know which factory is good for specific product? we cant. we would have to guess. so in other words in my opinion to find good factory you need to know someone over there ... and *they can find it...
joe_bleau
We've had good luck with a handful of molded parts from both www.quickparts.com and www.protomold.com. Our volumes were quite a bit smaller--initial runs of 200-2k, I think, It was nice not having to design the mold, just the part.

Haven't used any of the quick turn CNC firms yet.

bpmilne
The thing that always worked great for me was to buy my competitors product, take it apart, and see who made it or look for names / SKU's / notations I could google. You may be able to find this out just by browsing OEM web sites who advertise their clients.

From there I always had a great starting point for where to start looking. I did this largely because I never wanted to be the test pilot for a new OEM after some bad experiences.

Always visit the factory... It's the best money you'll spend with this sort of project even if you don't give them a PO.