What is the cheapest way to get a prototype made

[beeman_mccheyne]

Hello,

I am looking to build a prototype of a typical beehive honeycomb in plastic. Rough dimensions are 18"X10"X2" (with honeycomb cells filling most of both sides (about 1/4" dia with a wall thickness as thin as I can get away with (I made the initial thickness (.0625")). I have this all designed in SD, but need to find the most economical way of producing 48 of these "frames". I have heard injection molding can be an expensive startup, and just learned through reading a post on this site that I could have the plastic machined as well. Are there any other methods out there that I might be missing that could be better/cheaper? I don't know what the plastic would be, eventually it will have to be food grade, but for now - whatever holds up the best.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Frazer RM Ross

[Deviant]

Pretty cool that there is another beekeeper on the forum.

I looked into getting the following frames made. Unfortunately, everything I can find is not cost effective for prototyping.

If I remember on my quotes it was close to 25k-50k for the mold and 2-6 bucks per frame. I believe the mold was suppose to be good for around 250k frames and there was a minimal order required.

I'd love to start producing and making these frames, but I can't justify the cost.

At 75 bucks an hour machining time, that's 333 to 666 hours of machining. Obviously there would be fixture/material costs, but I don't see the expense in the mold. Of course, I'm completely naive on process of mold making, but I'm looking at machining a few molds on my mill for a proof of concept. However, I don't believe that I'll be able to get as crisp corners as there are in a natual comb.





If there are any injection mold companies out there.. Let me know if those prices are unreasonable.

[diyengineer]

Sounds like anyone with a cnc table router could do that for you. that material is pretty dang thick though! You would need almost two 4'x8'x2" sheets of the stuff which i assume is pretty dang expensive!! Let alone the machine time ($$) it will take to cut out the thousands and thousands of honeycomb cells. Then on top of that you have all the waste that you paid for which is money down the drain. It would almost be a better option to buy a small cnc machine and cut them out yourself! Then your not just throwing your money away, and in the end you have your honeycomb panels and a machine to make more.

Ideally injection molding would be a perfect candidate. It's extremely fast, no leftover waste like the milling way, which saves on initial materials purchase. downside is its expensive and i believe you will have to have someone machine the metal master mold for you, along with having access to some type of, plastic injector, commercial or DIY.

You could find someone with a large 3d printer that could print you out one just for testing purposes but that would also be costly.

Another option is not making them out of plastic at all. You could look into epoxy/resin based systems you could inject into a mold that someone could machine out for you. Then use a 2 part formula that would cure over a X amount of time, or use a heat curing formula.

Anyways, hoped i helped! You are in the right place though, lots of smart ppl are on here!

[Deviant]

Oh, I forgot to mention. The frames were going to be made out of food grade polypropylene.

[diyengineer]

Originally Posted by Deviant Oh, I forgot to mention. The frames were going to be made out of food grade polypropylene.

How much would something like that sell for on the market? Not to make, but actually costs to purchase, if it could be done? Just wondering, i have no clue about bee stuff but sounds really cool!

[Deviant]

You can buy "similar" frames for roughly 6 bucks per shipped. I was trying to get them made and to my house for 2 bucks per or less, which should allow me to sell them at roughly the same price with shipping.

I personally would use somewhere around 7500 or so of the frames or the next 2 years. Possibly more, depending how many more hives I try to get up and going.

[diyengineer]

Originally Posted by Deviant You can buy "similar" frames for roughly 6 bucks per shipped. I was trying to get them made and to my house for 2 bucks per or less, which should allow me to sell them at roughly the same price with shipping. I personally would use somewhere around 7500 or so of the frames or the next 2 years. Possibly more, depending how many more hives I try to get up and going.

Holy crap! 7500! haha. You are out of control with those bees lol.

That is really awesome!! Well i hope you get it all figured out!

[Deviant]

Originally Posted by diyengineer Holy crap! 7500! haha. You are out of control with those bees lol. That is really awesome!! Well i hope you get it all figured out!

10 frames per super, roughly 5 supers per hive... which equals around 150 hives. Which is small potatoes compared to most commercial guys that run between 500 and 10000 hives.

[beeman_mccheyne]

yeah.. 7500 frames is a pretty small number.

Deviant - you could go with 8 frames for the honey supers, and drone sized cells to maximize storage per box (as long as you use a queen excluder - nobody wants tons of those lazy couch potatoes eating the goods). Also for your design, you might want to stiffen up those frame "ears" as I've seen a lot of the commercially available plastic frames breaking at that point.

"You could find someone with a large 3d printer that could print you out one just for testing purposes but that would also be costly."

diyengineer - I'm not sure what 3d plotters are capable of these days, but I played with one 6 years back and it came out pretty brittal. The frames need to withstand some abuse in the extraction machine. There is a cheap plotter out there though for the DIY.. $1200 or something (search Thing-o-matic youtube) - again - I don't know if it could produce the right quality for testing purposes.

I guess another material that could be used is rubber. I know frame patents have come out on the plastic and metal for the honeycomb frame used in beekeeping. I imagine if rubber were selected it would use roughly the same injection process?

Cheers,

Frazer RM Ross

[Deviant]

Looked around last night.

The cheapest that I could find a 12x24x1.5" sheet of polypropylene was roughly 70 bucks.

Which hurts my feelings, since most of it would be milled away.

[beeman_mccheyne]

I was thinking last night I could do away with the plastic in its entireity and just make some sort of wax injection system that creates the comb out of wax instead of plastic. Hmm....

Yeah, $70/frame sucks.

[Deviant]

I looked at doing that. If you plan on keeping every frame, then it should be ok.

Unfortunately, if you plan to sell. Fresh wax is very fragile. I haven't come up with a good solution yet. Which is frustrating. LOL