Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
What Could Really Go Wrong?
I'm always impressed by the more unusual stories I hear from friends about their first en-
counter with manufacturing, like the team behind Pen Type-A having to unpack, disas-
semble, and hand-wash machining oil out of each one of their pens before shipping them
initiating full-scale production. This is typically done through iteration—first making nu-
merous prototypes until they are perfect, and then manufacturing samples via a small pilot
production run of the product.
Making samples effectively means undertaking a small-volume production run with
the final production design and manufacturing process. This is where the majority of de-
bugging takes place. It is also where you will need to begin paying the factory. For-
tunately, by starting small, you can minimize the amount of money you could potentially
lose. In six years of sending money to factories I've never visited, I've lost money several
times. But the total damage has been less than $2000 because I made a small sample pro-
duction run. Other friends have lost tens of thousands of dollars, but have managed to
avoid bigger problems. I had a wire transfer flat-out disappear, and my tiny local bank
couldn't trace it. I switched to an international bank after that. I have received products
that were out of spec, that were of poor quality, or, like the fans in
Figure 13.3
, that were
completely smashed and broken when I received them.
