Getting plastics made from CAD software

[mikal]

I've never had to do this, but has anyone any experience from sending a cad file, say autocad..., to a fab house to get their plastics made?

How much does this typically cost for a simple handheld size prototype?

Any other usefull information you can give me?

 

[sky123]

Hi,

I want to do exactly the same thing.
I found that professional designers use 'SolidWorks' or 'ProEngineer' to do their cad work.
Injection moulding is very expensive, but there are some companies that make
cheap(er) aluminium moulds (good for a few thousand pieces, before the mould is worn out), but it still costs 1-3 thousand dollars I think, e.g. www.protomold.com

Also, for a case, you would want to design it such that you can use the same mould for both halves if possible, to effectively half your cost. In practice you probably need at least 2 moulds though.