10-31-2019, 08:31 AM
It should be feasible for major manufacturers to mass produce them for under $250.
These niche devices like Pyro, on the other hand, don't have the injection molding equipment to crank out plastic parts en masse, nor the funding to outsource it. While injection molding is much more cost-effective than 3D printing for large production runs, the up front tooling cost can only be justified if you're going to sell hundreds of thousands of units. Hence, most low-volume projects use 3D printing, which is terribly slow and inefficient, and often requires larger pieces to be printed in sections. It's not the way you want to go if you're trying to reduce the unit cost.
So your choice is to either take what the corporations give you and like it, or pay more to have it done your way.
An electronics hobbyist could probably put one together from a single-board computer and other off-the-shelf modules on the cheap, but it would most likely be some big, ugly, clunky thing if done that way. At the very least, one would have to have a custom circuit board built, and be able to scavenge parts from other portable devices that fit the design.
These niche devices like Pyro, on the other hand, don't have the injection molding equipment to crank out plastic parts en masse, nor the funding to outsource it. While injection molding is much more cost-effective than 3D printing for large production runs, the up front tooling cost can only be justified if you're going to sell hundreds of thousands of units. Hence, most low-volume projects use 3D printing, which is terribly slow and inefficient, and often requires larger pieces to be printed in sections. It's not the way you want to go if you're trying to reduce the unit cost.
So your choice is to either take what the corporations give you and like it, or pay more to have it done your way.
An electronics hobbyist could probably put one together from a single-board computer and other off-the-shelf modules on the cheap, but it would most likely be some big, ugly, clunky thing if done that way. At the very least, one would have to have a custom circuit board built, and be able to scavenge parts from other portable devices that fit the design.
