It's interesting how for electronics projects, injection-molded enclosures can dominate non-R&D/salary costs unless scale is very large. Ie, the PCB, electronic

It's interesting how for electronics projects, injection-molded enclosures can dominate non-R&D/salary costs unless scale is very large. Ie, the PCB, electronic components, SMT assembly are probably not that expensive, especially with some of the ops out of Shenzhen available. Shipping materials, shipping costs to you and the customer add cost. Unintentional radiator certification adds cost. Intentional radiator certification adds more. All these together might cost 10% of the injection mold. One escape hatch is custom machined and printed ABS or metal enclosures, like from Polycase and Hammond. It is limiting and forces you to design around the enclosure, but is much cheaper for small/medium runs than injection molding. Ie a few hundred $USD upfront depending on turnaround time, enclosure size and material etc, then not much more than the plain enclosure per-unit. If you are injection-molding, hopefully you can use a 3D printer to prototype, but you may still end up screwing up the first (or more) mold due to issues highlighted in this article.