Author Topic: Single person full product design  (Read 4014 times)

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Offline jonpaul

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #25 on: July 12, 2023, 07:56:14 am »
Since 1970s designed and made many products, some one off, some were in production.

Used hand drawn schematics, NO simulations, CAD only for mechanincal and a SW pgm for magnetics.

So it can be done but years of experience to get a viable and economic result,

Jon
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Offline Kasper

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #26 on: July 13, 2023, 06:13:08 am »
Yes one person can do this.  When I design PCB and mech it is more efficient, easier to minimize the size and more enjoyable compared to just designing electronics and working with a mech designer.
 

Online Anthocyanina

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #27 on: July 13, 2023, 09:11:31 am »
I don't know why she unlisted some of her videos, her best ones in my opinion, but fortunately i had the link to this one when i shared it to someone. She designed everything for this phone, from the electronics, to some of the software, to all the mechanical parts, including the rotary dial and case, not sure about the bell. This is i think the best example of one person alone designing a complete product:

 
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Offline PlainName

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #28 on: July 13, 2023, 11:40:03 am »
For example, the normal way to cover an unused electrical port on a normal bit of outdoor electrical gear is to have a screw cap and O ring seal that looks something like this
https://www.newark.com/productimages/standard/en_US/5064788.jpg

Rechargeable bike lights don't use this obvious solution. Instead they use this



A silicone rubber bung and weak lanyard that is engineered to fail after 18 months. Once the bung is lost water gets in and the light fails within a few days.

Not sure that's a good example. For a consumer product the 'obvious' industrial solution of a screw cap can be just a pain in the arse to use, and many users would prefer the ability to quickly pop off the rubber and slip the USB plug in, all taken a mere moment. Particularly if they're going to do it often. Added to that, there's no loose cap swinging on the end of a tether which will get in the way, and... oh, just many reasons the bung is better in practice even though it's worse in function.

I think the automatic assumption that things are designed to fail is not usually the right one. A good design is a trade-off of many competing and incompatible requirements, and focusing on the single 'must last forever and never wear out' is perhaps a bit too narrow.
 
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Offline e100Topic starter

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #29 on: July 13, 2023, 04:00:22 pm »
Not sure that's a good example. For a consumer product the 'obvious' industrial solution of a screw cap can be just a pain in the arse to use, and many users would prefer the ability to quickly pop off the rubber and slip the USB plug in, all taken a mere moment. Particularly if they're going to do it often. Added to that, there's no loose cap swinging on the end of a tether which will get in the way, and... oh, just many reasons the bung is better in practice even though it's worse in function.

The screw cap is not an 'industrial' solution, it is literally everywhere in common use because it does a specific job exceptionally well and it's use can be mastered by young and old.

The rubber bung style used on bike lights is actually more inconvenient because it requires you to use your finger nail to lever it off. Something you can grab with two fingers is far easier to use.
 

Offline Kasper

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #30 on: July 13, 2023, 04:04:43 pm »

The screw cap is not an 'industrial' solution, it is literally everywhere in common use because it does a specific job exceptionally well and it's use can be mastered by young and old.

Screw cap is easy to design too.  Took me about half a day and most of that time was just learning how to make threads and searching for o-rings.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #31 on: July 13, 2023, 04:13:31 pm »
Quote
because it does a specific job exceptionally well

Exactly. It only has to be good enough, not perfect. As I said, with screw caps I've had crossed threads, lost the cap, got annoyed by the tether catching on stuff (if there is one - see lost cap), etc. Sure, bungs can be hard to pull out (though Garmin seem to have that one solved) but that's just a shit example.
 

Offline Kasper

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #32 on: July 13, 2023, 04:22:03 pm »
Quote
because it does a specific job exceptionally well

Exactly. It only has to be good enough, not perfect. As I said, with screw caps I've had crossed threads, lost the cap, got annoyed by the tether catching on stuff (if there is one - see lost cap), etc. Sure, bungs can be hard to pull out (though Garmin seem to have that one solved) but that's just a shit example.

If you use AAA then you dont usually have the cap off for long enough to lose it.

How many iterations do you think it took Garmin to solve it?  What is the cost and time for each iteration?

I like 3D printing prototypes but have not had good results with 3D printed or molded 'rubber' in low cost, low quantity builds.
 

Offline e100Topic starter

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #33 on: July 13, 2023, 04:32:01 pm »

The screw cap is not an 'industrial' solution, it is literally everywhere in common use because it does a specific job exceptionally well and it's use can be mastered by young and old.

Screw cap is easy to design too.  Took me about half a day and most of that time was just learning how to make threads and searching for o-rings.

Depending on the application you might not even need an O ring. If you look at the construction of a modern fizzy drinks bottle you'll see that the seal is plastic on plastic with a simple wedge shape to provide the leverage. I know from experience that these can survive hundreds of cycles and still be airtight. Incidentally your average $0.10 PET plastic disposable fizzy drink bottle is far more durable than the vast majority of $10 SAN plastic 'sports bottles'. Perhaps those are made to fail as well.....
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #34 on: July 13, 2023, 05:01:11 pm »
Quote
because it does a specific job exceptionally well

Exactly. It only has to be good enough, not perfect. As I said, with screw caps I've had crossed threads, lost the cap, got annoyed by the tether catching on stuff (if there is one - see lost cap), etc. Sure, bungs can be hard to pull out (though Garmin seem to have that one solved) but that's just a shit example.

If you use AAA then you dont usually have the cap off for long enough to lose it.

If you have AAA then there's no need for a USB cable so the choice of bung vs cap is irrelevant  because a bung is inappropriate (very).

Quote
How many iterations do you think it took Garmin to solve it?  What is the cost and time for each iteration?

No idea, but  I would prefer to buy a product that is designed to be used rather than one that is easy to make. If you're competing with other producers then you need to be better in some way, and being a bit more of a pain to use is not, I would suggest, 'better'.

Quote
I like 3D printing prototypes but have not had good results with 3D printed or molded 'rubber' in low cost, low quantity builds.

My attempts at creating a microprocessor on a chip have been... not good. But I don't suggest that microprocessors on a chip are therefore bad, just that I've been crap at making them. If your 'rubber's  have not been suitable, that isn't necessarily saying all rubbers are rubbish.
[/quote]
 

Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #35 on: July 14, 2023, 02:54:24 am »
Qi charging is very cheap, then no opening in the case is needed at all.
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Offline PlainName

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #36 on: July 14, 2023, 09:23:09 am »
That would be a decent solution :)
 

Online fourfathom

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #37 on: July 14, 2023, 06:47:35 pm »
That would be a decent solution :)
For a bicycle light?  It's way easier to bring a AA or AAA battery to the already-installed light than to remove the light and bring it inside to your charger.
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Offline PlainName

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #38 on: July 14, 2023, 09:46:02 pm »
Wouldn't lights normally be removed from the bike when unattended to prevent the need to purchase another set?
 

Online fourfathom

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #39 on: July 15, 2023, 12:30:21 am »
Wouldn't lights normally be removed from the bike when unattended to prevent the need to purchase another set?
Perhaps, but not where I live.

Regarding "Single person full product design", I'm doing this now as a hobby / business.  I do miss having people who can handle the mech. eng., sales, and operations.  But I'm keeping it small and targeted, so it's not too bad taking this on myself.  Standardizing on a few simple enclosures makes the mech part easier, and designing so JLCPCB  can do the PCB fab/assy helps with the operations part.  I do a few final assy tasks as well as test and shipping).  I'm worried that this will actually take off and I will need to find people and resources to handle the expansion...
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Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #40 on: July 15, 2023, 03:57:58 am »
For a bicycle light?  It's way easier to bring a AA or AAA battery to the already-installed light than to remove the light and bring it inside to your charger.
Why add extra steps of removing the batteries from the device and putting them in the charger, then reversing the whole process? Qi charging is just a matter of placing the device on the charger, as simple as it gets until long range wireless charging becomes a thing.

Also, a decent NiMH charger is fairly expensive, while lithium chargers are cheap thanks to economy of scale.
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Offline doobes

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #41 on: July 15, 2023, 02:30:55 pm »
NT
« Last Edit: July 15, 2023, 02:32:59 pm by doobes »
 

Offline Infraviolet

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #42 on: July 15, 2023, 04:51:56 pm »
NiHaoMike, reply #40:

You can get multi-cell NiMH chargers for stacks of series cells. You can then have a wire which plugs in to a device to let such a chrarger be connected. Cell removal only happens when cells are worn out and old, that is when having the standard form factor helps, you can take them out and get new NiMH AAs to fit in their place. If you want a device to "last forever" you're better of focusing on easy replacement of parts with generically available spares, rather than attempting to have things which never wear out. Charging could also be done entirely with onboard circuitry, you'd use a wire, or an inductive coil system to simply supply 5V or 12V constant voltage, and inside the device the charger would convert this to the mroe specialised requirements of actually charging the cells. Again, cells would only come out individually if/when they wore out, for charging they'd remain inside and in series.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #43 on: July 15, 2023, 04:59:22 pm »
Has anyone made a gadget from start to finish doing everything themselves including the mechanicals?

As an example I'm thinking of the humble LED bicycle light which on the surface appears easy but if you write out the list of requirements it's as long as your arm.
For starters it has to work in a high vibration, high humidity environment with extremes of temperature, keep the rain out, be able to be operated while wearing gloves, have a visual indicator that is visible day and night, not catch fire when dropped on the ground and so on.

Can one person do this kind of project or do you really need a team of specialists?
Very few products are truly designed from the ground up. Almost everything is built from components. What you can do on your own, without subcontracting aspects, depends a lot on the product and your skills. For a bike lamp I think a good experienced plastics mould designer could cope with everything. Anyone not skilled in mould design is going to struggle with that part. For something that can use an off the shelf case, but has greater functional complexity, different people will probably be able to cope with the entire thing.

 

Online Smokey

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Re: Single person full product design
« Reply #44 on: July 15, 2023, 11:07:36 pm »
I'm assuming the question implies contract manufacturing and sourcing components when available.  Otherwise there are an infinite list of show stoppers.. Are you making your own silicon wafers?  Are you smelting your own iron?  ....
With that said..

The short answer is yes, I've done consumer electronics devices from start to finish by myself. 
The long answer is that it took many many years to learn all the skills required there.  It will almost always be quicker to marker to put together a team of specializations to do each thing.  Solo is inefficient. 

Best advice if you want to do it all is to go work for a really small company where you have the opportunity to learn how to do everything.  Get the experience on their dime.
 


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