Custom electronics enclosures, any advise?

[podoljano]

Hello everybody.
Ive been working on a product for a couple of years now. All the electronics is now in a perfect DFM state, and everything works like a charm. So far we been using off the shelf cases, and some 3D prints in order to simulate some casings.
Now the next step is coming up, we need to implement the electronics in a purpose made casing, yet we have no experience with this. I can do some basic solidworks, but my main skill is electronics hardware design.
The product is basically a tiny cellphone that is worn as a necklace. The dimensions is approx ø20 x 80mm.
What we are looking for is following:
- waterproof design
- light piping for LED's
- ability to have 2 waterproof buttons
- nice organic design.
- cant be metal, due to 3 antennas
Do anybody have any experience in this field and have some advice which way we should go. Since we are a start-up, the price is a very important factor, therefore we hope for some good advice to help us further.

Best regards and Merry Christmas
Nikolaj

 

[Samran]

I just went through getting an enclosure for some boards we have running. It wasn't a complicated design and we originally thought of 3D printing, but one option that we didn't originally think of was laser cutting. I was able to draw up a design for a simple enclosure that was cut at a shop and then we assembled it in-house. More materials are available for laser cutting as well. We went with a nice clear acrylic but you could do anything from wood to leather to plastics to paper.

Best of luck in your project!
Samran

 

[david401040]

volume is key ? injection molding ?
How many are you going to build

 

[podoljano]

Thanks for the replies.

Regarding volume, we predict that there is capacity for at least 1-500.000 units in Europe, depending on our marketing skills. We are trying to produce a nice looking product so we can attract some investments. Is this a wrong way to go about it?
Should we seek to do some corporations with design firms, industrial design engineers? Im really lost I just fear that since we are new in this field we will end up spending all of our funds on a bunch of consultations without any real outcome.

I see a bunch of fairly nice looking Chinese products being sold on ebay, some of these with quite nice system integration. A example: https://www.aliexpress.com/item-img/-/2006997602.html# This is some where in the ballpark where we want to head for.

Best regards
Nikolaj

 

[Greg Togtema]

I used to design the electronics for some unique ultrasound devices which needed to be waterproof. The machinists in the company were pretty fascinating with their ability to create casings to suit our needs. For example, they were able to create oddly shaped gaskets to prevent water seepage. Maybe you want to find a machine shop that can give good ideas. To reduce costs, I have seen grants for these sorts of professional services.

To create 500, you can either have an automated CNC machine fabricate these parts en mass, or you can injection mold them. The molds can cost 5 figures, but there are ways to reduce this to 4 figures if you use less quality materials (good for a small batch).