Michael Kellough said:
In making such a mold, how big would it be? How many of those little plastic “windows” would be injected at once? How many people could be involved in producing the mold to run up such a high cost?
Just curious. In my ignorance I’m imagining one highly skilled person working full time on the thing. Even if it takes all year how could that effort become a bill for 1/4 million$?
Even molds for small parts get big. I've installed molds that were literally just to try wearing them out, just keep making the same thing all day, to test wear, parts come out, get grind up, and go thru machine again. Just made a small part, the model weighs 100s of lbs. Keep in mind it's not just the cavity, which as mentioned are polished and controlled to extreme tolerances, but the steel they are in needs cooling ports as they are liquid cooled.
Go more extreme look up die casting. Companies like honda die-cast engine blocks, those tools cost a fortune and need regular replacement (they wear out). There have even been efforts to die cast steel, which then requires dies made of tungsten (this process hasn't been utilized much beyond test). Automotive industry has to plan in the swap of the dies as they wear out. This is in part of why models get discontinued, die was end of life with just enough life to support service part requirements. But if they go an make another die, then they will crank them out for a good while longer as they have sunk the cost in the die. Not so long ago a company that does parts for the F-150 burned down. Ford had to get a die rushed from the other side of world and hired an entire aircraft to get it fast.
All of this also goes to why companies like Festool don't change the designs often, they have to pay off the dies for those parts, and then decide to do a re-design or continue with another run. So unless they make a major mistake, they will live with it (possibly relevant to the Kapex). Look at the tilt on the TS55, that change required them change the basil platten for the -F, doubtful they made a new die, they probably did a re-work on the one they had, which would not have been cheap either. Look at any die cast or plastic part on a Festool product and start thinking that tool might cost 50-100,000 USD, then think about how many of that model tool they sell, the price starts to present itself.
Part of the cost is you have a large block of high quality tool steel, maybe each half cost 4000 USD for the blank. Basic machining to mount it in a machine, maybe a few days, along with gun drilling and putting ports in it for the cooling. lets say that step takes 4 days, 8hr shift, 32hrs, machine time runs 150 bucks and hour, 4800 dollars there. So now you can start to carve the actual shape. Now you are using small mills to carve slow and accurate, and steel machines much slower than aluminum. Even a simple shape if it's on a mill for 2 weeks, 80hrs, x 150 hr, there is 12grand. so now each half is up to 20k each. Then you need to get a skilled craftsman to get in there with hand tools detailing parts, then polishing it, etc. Mo money, it just goes on. Before you know if you are 30-40k per half. Even when you go off shore you still have to pay the CNC machine and those cost the same in all countries, got to pay for that machine, and when you got a 1million dollar mill tied up for a month making your tool, you are going to pay a lot of money to pay for that machine. It's not unlike folks here. The clients are paying for your tools, you buy the tools to do the job and if you need a tool for a job, you price it into the job. When you start cutting steel in complex shapes, it's all expensive. Even having simple parts carved of steel if they are large, they get expensive fast and take weeks to make. I had a part that couldn't be cast rapidly at the time, it was machined, just happened to start with a block that weighed in the 1000s and got cut down to into the 100s when done, End part cost about $100/lb in the end, nothing special, it just took a few weeks to carve.
Look at things like systainers, it's obvious why they cost so much, it's the dies to make them, straight sides means hard to make and complex die designs.
It cost a lot of money to make parts cheaply.
