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> bad results with anything niche and unusual In a way, this is exactly the problem. Product discovery for consumer items is pretty much solved. However, produ
by HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
> bad results with anything niche and unusual
In a way, this is exactly the problem. Product discovery for consumer items is pretty much solved. However, product discovery for niche industrial or scientific items is a difficult area. If you have tons of $$$, it's easy to find representatives for the big suppliers. However, for each of these large suppliers, there are 10 or 100 smaller or even "cottage industry" suppliers. The problem is how you find them in the first place, and how to gain confidence in the quality of what they offer.
- eternityforest 3y agoWith that I think a lot of it is knowing what's near impossible to mess up so you might as well buy the cheapest crap you can find, and what matters so much you should just pay for the big brands even if you have to make everything else crappier to afford it. It's all the same lottery of counterfeit chips, some product categories they have it figured out, some they don't. And a lot of the time, you can just design in such a way that it doesn't matter if the parts are quality. Like, yeah, if you make a lot, you will see a few failures in power conversion or handling parts. So use a USB supply they can swap. One or two switches are going to break most likely. So don't use a mechanical lid switch that's constantly held down, unless you make it swappable. Your 3D printed part might have varying quality, so design in such a way that it still works on a badly tuned printer. There's always that one part that you don't know which one to get and none look very good, but I see a lot of commercial products with lots of unnecessary unique niche parts that could have been a common standard thing.