Your situation was pretty different... Your company buys them, I was buying as an individual. You likely have a proven source, I didn't. It just wasn't a risk I was willing to take at that point in my life.
You probably made the right call, though, even if you had found a perfect supplier. Hardware projects funded by individuals almost always end in heartache if they try to go big.
At the time, I think I made the right call. Now with this machine being available I'm reconsidering. The mold bases are pretty inexpensive too. I could make the same investment I was going to make several years ago, but have a machine if it doesn't work out rather than a hunk of precisely machined, rather useless, steel on the other side of the world.
Was that price from China or the U.S. (or somewhere else)?
> I passed on that at the time and considered producing them myself but this machine didn't exist at the time. If it had, I might be making them now!
Does this mean you stopped making your product after fulfilling the Kickstarter orders?
After fulfilling around 700 units on Kickstarter, I sold another 300 at local Makerfaires and around 100 on Amazon (using Vendor Express.)
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1954489654/squizmo-a-3d...
Using the edge of the counter is certainly one way to get the contents of the tube toward the opening. The Squizmo stays in position so the toothpaste stays in the same place. I think you'd be surpised at how flat the tube is after a Squizmo has been run up it!
However, I guess this one has the unique feature of letting you reuse smaller tubes by cutting off the end and refilling from a larger tube.
I get the convenience of using a smaller tube, so refilling it would be nice, but doesn’t convenience go away when you have this big plastic squeezer thing at the end of it?
But I want to say WOW to your kickstarter video!! I was not expecting that level of testing and engineering to go into this, kudos to you for taking it next level.
Do you think you recouped the costs of those testing jigs or was it all good fun?
Honestly if you showed me your product in CAD or injection molded and asked if it could be useful 3D printed I would have guessed "no". You've opened my vision up!
Either way, however much toothpaste you use, this could potentially help you get more out of the tube. The payback would be longer, but that's not really why most people buy stuff like this.
While in the industrial space most use the common "gun" style applicator with the large tubes of product, and certain other manufacturers (3M in particular) sell custom applicators for industrial use for certain products (oftentimes at an insane markup) - there is the space for both the DIY'er and "handyman" (as well as commercial maintenance).
They will typically use regular squeeze tubes, especially on smaller projects where the larger gun-style tubes are too much or wasteful (because they may only use a small amount, and even when capped off, the tubes will dry out/cure relatively rapidly, especially at the nozzle end - making them useless and wasting product/money).
There also might be a market for automotive window glass installers for the sealants they use (and a/c repairmen?); actually tons of markets like this when you stop to think about it!
Find a business that buys product in tubes (protip: find industrial product in tubes and figure out who buys it!) and sell your product to them at a 10x markup as a cost-saving device.
In order to produce them cost effectively, I'd need molds that cost several times what this entire system cost. And after that I'd have to order thousands at a time to bring my cost down to say $1. I passed on that at the time and considered producing them myself but this machine didn't exist at the time. If it had, I might be making them now! There are other benchtop/low volume molding systems but nothing comes as close to automatic production as this one.
As for the company's site, this is fairly typical, but I'm sorry I didn't link to a better page. It certainly didn't get my blood boiling though. Them showing their price brings lots of good will. The CNC mill is also very interesting, with 4 motors driving the Z axis simultaneously.