Core77

Speculative Moldmaking

By Rain Noe - October 17, 2011

in Design Business

Photo is representative only, this is NOT the iPhone 5! So don't spend your money.

Photo is representative only, this is NOT the iPhone 5! So don't spend your money.

During the industrial design process, there is a time to change your mind and a time not to change your mind. With the projects I worked on involving molded plastics, for instance, the design might change dozens of times until we "cut steel" (slang for having the steel molds cut, which ran into five, sometimes six figures). Then it was too late to make changes. Or to be more specific, if design changes were needed at that point, a deep-pocketed company could absorb the costs—but you or someone on your team was definitely getting fired.

Which is why I found the following tale so interesting. In the past few months Hard Candy Cases, a manufacturer of Apple accessories, received leaked 3D files of the exterior dimenions of the purported iPhone 5 from not one, but three different Chinese manufacturers claiming to have the inside skinny. HCC Pres Tim Hickman had cases designed to fit these new dimensions, then ponied up the $50,000 to cut steel for them.

Why on Earth would he take such a gamble? Well, think about it: If Apple doesn't release dimensions of a new iPhone until launch day, your competition is scrambling to design to the new specs and it will take them days or weeks to get production models ready; meanwhile you swoop in with truckfuls of ready product. You're the only game in town, the market is yours, and that $50,000 in the red will quickly turn blacker than Steve Jobs' turtleneck.

Hickman bet wrong, of course. Businessweek has the full and fascinating story in "The Shadowy World of iPhone Cases", which also details the more conservative approach taken by HCC competitor Speck:On the morning of Apple's Oct. 4 announcement, top managers at Palo Alto startup Speck huddled into a conference room filled with colorful MacBooks to watch the news trickle in. They had created several rough models of potential new designs for the next iPhone, but were far from committing to any of them. "We have no idea what's going to hit the market," says Irene Baran, Speck's CEO. "We listen to the rumors like everyone else does and make intelligent guesses."

Hickman and HCC still stand to make out: Should the leaked drawings come to fruition with a future Apple announcement, he'll have molds ready to pump plastic into. If not he'll have to find a scrap metal dealer. Apparently making iPhone cases requires not only molds of steel, but nerves made of the same stuff.

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John

13 years ago

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@Phil

A multicavity tool cut in a durable steel could definitely be that price, even if it were simple. It could also have been a 2 shot tool, or one with lots of actions. Undercuts and multiple slides could easily drive up the price to 50k.

@mass
You can also take material away from the part, but that requires welding in inserts to the tool, or changing your slides/other mold components, and is obviously more expensive than adding material by cutting away steel.
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mass_producer

13 years ago

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It should be noted, as not to scare anyone prematurely - once you've cut your tooling, you can make changes. But, there's a whole new set of rules to make sure your changes are tool safe. Generally, you can add material to your final part, but can't take material away.
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Shaun

13 years ago

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Yeah, a single cavity tool of that size made in China is probably on the order of $15k. The rest of the $50k was probably on building up stock.
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Phil

13 years ago

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$50k for an Iphone sized tool? Even if it is multi-cavity does anyone else think that's a bit exaggerated?
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