Metal Injection Moulding

[FWH]

Originally Posted by civicfan

I can't say for sure as far as the car industry is concerned, but accidentally I have some perception of mass-production metalworking, and if it was for general tools/parts, given many thousand units 50p difference per piece seems quite realistic.

When the brake slams down, my guess is there isn't much teeth left to break, or the plastic is too supple and the tooth bends releasing the lever.

Getting off topic here - but do you think it would work to stamp out a ratchet without any after treatment?

If you think you can, then you may well be right about the cost.

I was presuming you would need a more complex process to make a metal ratched, but maybe not.

[civicfan]

Originally Posted by FWH

...do you think it would work to stamp out a ratchet without any after treatment?

Yes the precision would be sufficient, but there are even better ways like this
for instance Metal injection molding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and in large amounts it is dirt cheap, believe me. The approach of saving wherever possible regardless of the decrease in quality / longevity is taking frightening proportions IMHO, and it applies to almost any aspect of modern design/production that I can think of. Even medical equipment today is built on the cheap or at least with "planned obsolescence". It has some rational background, after all the customer usually has to buy a new item once the old one fails, yet it remains a question whether he will choose the same brand. If you buy cheap stuff, you expect this kind of attitude, but with an allegedly high quality product you would expect better- or at least I would...

[FWH]

Originally Posted by civicfan

Yes the precision would be sufficient, but there are even better ways like this
for instance Metal injection molding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and in large amounts it is dirt cheap, believe me.

Interesting, never done that.

What kind of quantites are we talking about to use this method?

What are the tooling costs compared to plastic injection moulding?

When stamping I was thinking you would have to "finish off" the teeth in some way - but maybe not as you say.

[civicfan]

Originally Posted by FWH

Interesting, never done that.

What kind of quantites are we talking about to use this method?

What are the tooling costs compared to plastic injection moulding?

When stamping I was thinking you would have to "finish off" the teeth in some way - but maybe not as you say.

The quantities - I think some 10.000 would be the minimum economically feasible amount, the more, the better, obviously

The tolerance range required is about 0,2 mm which is extremely crude (the average 20€ kitchen mixer has 2-3 moulded parts requiring much better tolerance) and the tooling is available at the outsourcing companies, it's just a matter of making the dies - perhaps a few thousand euros (or less if the supplier can make them in his own factory which is the rule). Everything else is the cost of material (approx. 4 mm steel sheets plus plastic if you want to save weight) and energy, staff, etc. - would be very expensive to make, say, a hundred pieces, but with 100.000 it isn't any more (how many Civics were made as yet?). A good example from another branch is watchmaking, most Swiss companies acquire their parts or whole calibres from ETA, a large specialized supplier. If you buy a 500€ watch, you can have 80+% same parts as in a 5.000€ watch, which does not make the first one worse (or the latter cheaper) - it is the quantity that suppresses the production cost. Another good example is pressing CDs, the total cost with large series with printed booklet and box may easily go below 20 euro cents (one of my pals owned a pressing company so I know) - but if you have to make 500 CDs better get yourself a printer and burner because the cost of pressing them would eat you

[FWH]

Sounds interesting - must look in to it a bit more.
0,2mm tolerance works for me most of the time.

[FWH]

** Thread split from here handbrake self release (inc recall letter) **