OK I spent 4 hours with an industrial designer last night and now have a full working 3D model at 1:1 scale with all the parts made as separate STL files for machining or 3D printing. The beauty of working with this guy is that he saw things that I missed and his CAD picks up any conflicts in the model. I've using SketchUp and whilst my model was good looking, it was so far out, it was not funny.
This Tube Bag is happening one way or another, however, this next process will not be cheap, and if you are all serious about acquiring one of these, you will need to pay a deposit to allow this to move to the next step.
There are a couple of ways to do this -
1. I have one of each part made up as a ,master. I make silicone molds and cast the parts from a hard plastic like epoxy. Works for a small order of 20 to 50 units.
2. I have the whole thing made in China with injection molding.
There is a company local to me, but I doubt they would be competitive, I will be getting a quote though.
China presents language barriers, but I have worked around them before and got awesome results.
The problem with IM is that I would need to make way more units to be cost effective. China is about 1/2 the cost when you looking at this stuff. If it were to go to that level, I would be best getting a licence from Universal like HC MAGs did and it would become a commercial item like those shoes.
Pipe dream? I don't know.
Anyway, if I ran #1, I am still up for about 2 grand in processing fees (machining etc) and materials.
