Product Startup Podcast Episode 223: Prototype vs. Pre-Production Parts

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello product innovators. Today we learn the key difference between designing a test prototype versus designing a pre-production prototype from a 25-year industrial design engineer.

00:00:09 Kevin Mako: This is the Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in hardware product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between.

00:00:19 Kevin Mako: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for hardware startups. Welcome back everyone. I'm very excited to introduce Tim Uys to the show. Tim is the director of design at our very own Mako Design for almost 10 years.

00:00:31 Kevin Mako: Before us, he held various senior design leadership and lecturing roles and worked with Dell, Nike Golf, Qualcomm, and IRONMAN. Today, Tim will share valuable knowledge from vendors, startups, and small manufacturers on how a mechanical prototype and pre-production prototype differ for plastic parts primarily, what design for manufacturing requirements are, and best practices for ensuring an efficient plastic product design, engineering, and prototyping process.

00:00:53 Kevin Mako: Now, onto the episode. This show is produced by Mako Design, the original firm providing end-to-end consumer product development services tailored specifically to hardware startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Take your product from idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com.

00:01:10 Kevin Mako: Now, onto the episode. Hey, Tim, welcome back to the show.

00:01:15 Tim Uys: Hey, Kevin. It's great to be back again.

00:01:16 Kevin Mako: We're excited today to talk to you about a very specific phase in the product development process.

00:01:21 Kevin Mako: And today, we're primarily talking about products that have plastic or products that are entirely plastic. But this actual prototyping process that we're going to be talking about is akin to many different types or versions of products as well, whether it has electronics or silicones or metals or whatever else.

00:01:36 Kevin Mako: This frame of thinking is very important as you go from, we call a mechanical prototype or a working prototype into a pre-production prototype. And the importance of both phases, but also the key differences and what you're working on from one into the next.

00:01:54 Kevin Mako: Before we get into all that good stuff, Tim, just give us a bit of a background of how you got to the success that you are today.

00:02:01 Tim Uys: I think success is relative, but I think 20 years of experience, 25 years of experience in industrial design from working on all kinds of consumer products, telephones and things when we still used to have home phones and things like that to more modern things like undersea sonar systems and products for Dell and for Nike. There have been many, many different products

00:02:27 Tim Uys: That have come across my desk. I think just mainly through experience I've learned the better ways to tackle product development, and better ways to try and optimize flow from having a great idea to having a good product on the shelf.

00:02:42 Kevin Mako: Yeah, that's amazing. Almost 10 years of Mako Design here, Tim, and obviously you worked on dozens and dozens and dozens of projects. And the reality is in this world that we live in, the vast majority of hardware startup inventions either are all plastic or mainly plastic, or at a minimum, probably have some plastic components or elements to them, especially with a whole wide range and variety of plastics within that subcategory. So first and foremost, Tim, what are we talking

00:03:08 Kevin Mako: About when we talk about a mechanical prototype or a mid-stage prototype? First, I want to address the audience in understanding that let's assume we've already, for the sake of this podcast, we're going to assume we're already gone through all the design engineering research steps. We've already maybe roughed together some early stage, just brief, rough prototypes and that sort of stuff. But now we move into a mid-stage prototype called the mechanical prototype. Tim, describe what that mechanical prototype is, and then we'll lean into the difference between a mechanical

00:03:35 Kevin Mako: Prototype and then going into your pre-production or final prototype from there.

00:03:39 Tim Uys: So the previous step that you just mentioned is kind of where we've gone to prove out a mechanism, perhaps to prove our thought or an idea and see that it could actually be made to work.

00:03:51 Tim Uys: The next step where we talk about mechanical prototype is where we start to say okay these components now need to be put into a format that we think will be probably injection molded or machined in some kind of way mass produced in the future out of plastic and we begin to shape those components in such a way that we optimize them for those processes for maybe for

00:04:15 Tim Uys: Injection molding for instance so we've done the rough prototypes perhaps out of different kinds of materials. We've proven out the mechanism, but now the time comes where we have to translate that to a plastic option, kind of modeling them in such a way that they can be made out of plastic.

00:04:32 Kevin Mako: Yeah, that's such a key step because we're really now moving from roughing something together. Obviously it's done via really good CAD models from the design phase. You've done some of your rough prototyping for basic, basic form, fit, function, et cetera, to test out really key assumptions. Now we're moving into this mechanical prototype where we have to take all the assumptions and the learnings from everything that we've done so far

00:04:53 Kevin Mako: And really start detailing out that CAD to build these parts now. And the material is representing a manufactured unit so that we can really start testing out the reliability and the longevity and the quality of the actual design in a really well put together prototype.

00:05:09 Tim Uys: That's right. And, you know, sometimes in that transition, we learn whether the plastic is strong enough to do what we need to do, or whether we need to think about different kinds of plastic. Those are kind of the things we start to test out in this phase. There are many different kinds of plastic and they have different uses. And so this is kind of the phase where we start to decide what materials we'll be using in different specific parts.

00:05:36 Kevin Mako: Yeah. And then we get the beauty of actually trying them out. Now that's a key in hardware design is you can only do so much digitally. At some point you have to translate that to the physical world and doing these parts in a really high quality fashion while thinking about the plan and all of the design for manufacturing logic that you've put into the even the original design into what was happening in the rough prototyping and some of the feedback you got there now actually building these parts in a way that you think could conceivably be

00:06:01 Kevin Mako: Manufacturable, but not yet parts that are actually manufactured, because we are just trying to really test out the quality, reliability, workability, usability, and customer use case quality, all of these other things that go into making sure that your product is designed great, what you want works well. So now we move into the next step. So let's assume we've nailed that, we've done a really good job at this mid-stage prototype, and now we're ready to move forward

00:06:26 Kevin Mako: Into manufacturing. Obviously, we can't now jump straight into manufacturing, so there's this really key step in between, and that's your pre-production prototype. Tim, talk us through what that is and how that differs from a mechanical prototype right so uh now that we've decided what

00:06:42 Tim Uys: Materials we're going to use as you said Kevin is we have decided what processes that we're going to form those parts um and in for instance the example of injection molding there are certain things we need to do to make them easy to mold and also to take out of the mold when it comes to injection molding. If you think about an injection mold, the simplest version of that

00:07:07 Tim Uys: We always describe is the flower pot shape, right? That's, let's say, a right-sided flower pot, but it has these drafted angles on it. And if you imagined a top part and a bottom part of a tool having to close together in order to create a cavity that is the shape of the flower pot, what you want to be able to do is to open those two parts of the tool and literally have

00:07:29 Tim Uys: That flower pot just drop out or drop off of the mold so that it's easy to demold again and that improves cycle times and things down the process. Now these draft angles are typically between half a degree and three degrees depending on the roughness of an exterior texture or finish on a product and so we have to go into those mechanical parts that we designed before and

00:07:55 Tim Uys: Start applying these angles to all the surfaces that would be in touch with the mold, that can become a very tricky thing to do as well. Because the moment that you start moving away from right angles, everything gets a lot more complicated. This phase literally could take you back a step sometimes because once you start applying those angles, it just gets trickier to produce the part

00:08:21 Tim Uys: In perhaps the geometry that you wanted it to do the specific function that it was made for. That's kind of the next step, but it can be quite a complicated step. But it's something that we do very regularly and we're very good at.

00:08:37 Kevin Mako: It's such a key piece too. And hopefully this helps a lot of listeners. If it's your first time going through product development, especially for a plastic hardware product that is a unique consumer product, unique shape that you're developing and designing. This difference is really important to understand because so many hardware startups make the mistake of thinking, okay, I've got some great concept CAD, just send it through to manufacturing. You're missing three critical stages, the rough prototyping element to

00:09:03 Kevin Mako: Just cheaply and relatively easily testing key theories. And from there, you're going to a mechanical prototype to really make sure the product works well. Then once you've got something thing that works well, you're going into this third key phase, which is a pre-production prototype to make sure that all the little details that go into manufacturing engineering are ironed out.

00:09:23 Kevin Mako: All of this before you're actually then doing the actual production itself, which is really critical. Now, the question that so many people have when they look at this process is they say, well, why wouldn't you just do that work earlier? Well, if you look at this as kind of a pyramid, foundationally, you've got your concept design. And from there, you go into your rough prototype, which is where you drill down the physical parts. Mechanical prototype is, again, drilling it down to make sure it works. And then on top of that, you're

00:09:48 Kevin Mako: Then detailing it. If you were to try and invert that pyramid or to put all of that in the first stack, any kind of mistaken assumption, any type of design change, any type of just unknowns become exponentially more costly because all you're really doing is doing a whole bunch of work.

00:10:04 Kevin Mako: And if you change one tiny thing, then you have to redo all of that work again. So this process by using this pyramid style method and designing this is extremely efficient and effective at getting the vision you have as a product entrepreneur to a manufacturable standpoint.

00:10:20 Kevin Mako: The key here is not to skip steps because the further you push these sorts of design for engineering things forward, the more expensive they become. So if you have a really well-built out foundation, you go through all the appropriate steps to go from one phase to the next phase, you're building an incredibly strong foundation for the product overall to be able to go to manufacturing and be done well and done great, as opposed to pushing key problems or key solutions or key challenges forward.

00:10:46 Kevin Mako: Those costs, anytime you push something forward in hardware design, just know that you have doubled, tripled, quadrupled, whatever that cost was. And that's not a good thing to do as a hardware startup. So this is why you follow a key process and go from there.

00:10:59 Tim Uys: Yeah, very good point, Kevin. Every part or every component that you are taking from that mechanical prototype through to the pre-production prototyping is going to require a significantly more number of hours to prepare it for that pre-production prototype. And so if you were to, in the mechanical phase,

00:11:21 Tim Uys: Start making the changes that you would do in pre-production, you may find that you're doing double work or doing work that then has to be repeated further down the line. And so you're actually just, as you said, exponentially increasing the cost of your development time and cost of parts and products as you go down the line and potentially just causing yourself to have to go backwards again and restart the process. So it's better to kind of take it one step at a time

00:11:47 Tim Uys: And first develop out the mechanism, then take it to mechanical and then from there decide which are the parts that we have to take forward and are they in the right configuration to take to mass production and then prepare them for mass production so that you do the minimum amount of work.

00:12:03 Kevin Mako: Yep, Tim, that makes a ton of sense. And that's super helpful, I think, for everybody who's listening here to really dial down on and understand like, what is the goal at each phase?

00:12:13 Kevin Mako: What are you trying to achieve? And how is this being done efficiently so that you can keep this project running at a reasonable pace on a startup budget that also is done to a world-class standard?

00:12:24 Kevin Mako: Because as we know, hardware products must be released in a high quality fashion. There is simply no room with online reviews and high buyer requirements if you're going direct to wholesalers or even to retailers. If you're not hitting a minimum global standard of excellence in terms of product design and the quality of the actual manufacturing of the product, you will not succeed. Now that doesn't mean a lot of features. We talked a lot about that on the show, keeping

00:12:47 Kevin Mako: Your features to a minimum, which is an excellent thing because the less features that you have for your starter product as a hardware startup, then the easier it is to actually go through all these steps get you to production and when you go to production the lesser set of features have really been done the correct way and with the proper amount of thought so those features work well then you learn from your customers and you add features or you grow the business from there but you've got yourself into the market with a great product and that has gone through all the

00:13:13 Kevin Mako: Necessary steps to ensure that the manufacturing is reliable robust and all those other good things along the way Tim any passing notes before I let you go here no I I think the simplest thing that I can say is keep it simple, right?

00:13:28 Tim Uys: Usually keeping ideas streamlined all the way through the process. We often see great ideas come across our desk and complicating things by adding to them unnecessarily is what we try and avoid. And getting the basic idea through the whole process is usually the thing that is the most successful. We've often had clients that were excellent at that just focusing on their mvps and keeping the most important things,

00:13:55 Tim Uys: Most important solution at the forefront of their product and avoiding adding additional things because everything you add has to go through all these processes as we've discussed. And as I said, the more things you add in, the more exponentially it becomes expensive at the end.

00:14:11 Kevin Mako: Well, that's really a good thing to note as well, Tim, and I think it's important for listeners as well. Know that what we have given is kind of a general framework. If your product is significantly more complex or even more experimental, meaning you really don't know what the solution is and it might take a number of different attempts to get to said solution, then the framework here that we're talking about will certainly expand. So maybe it means doing two or three different

00:14:35 Kevin Mako: Types of even rough prototypes before we even get to mechanical prototype. Maybe it means redoing an entire prototype phase altogether. Like you mentioned, Tim, sometimes it means taking one step back, getting to a point, finding out that there's either a problem or a better solution, taking one step back and then going through the process again. The key is, again, keeping the feature creep to a minimum, keeping experimentation as a hardware startup to the minimum, meaning

00:15:00 Kevin Mako: Don't try and bite off too many new technologies at once. Don't be trying too much to push the boundaries of known physics as we have today. Do that on your version 2.0 and really stick to best practices as of today within the confines that your specifications allow and only experiment where you absolutely need to typically for the unique elements of your product that really haven't been done before. Because know that the difference between building a house and

00:15:24 Kevin Mako: Building a product is significant. Everything in a house is in a textbook. You can literally find every single millimeter of every single part of your house is in multiple textbooks over hundreds of thousands of different courses and teachings worldwide for hundreds of years. Whereas in product development, yes, 70% or 80% of the product is likely in a textbook and is likely routine.

00:15:45 Kevin Mako: But that 20% or 30% is the unique elements of your product. Even just simply combining two things that already exist into this new format or feature, which most inventions are a combination, a modification, or a rework of existing technology, that is what is unique.

00:16:01 Kevin Mako: And that will be experimental. And that's what really needs to be focused in terms of ironing out through these prototype type phases, making sure you're doing it right. And the routine design then comes along. And together, once you've solved both of those sides of the coin, you've got a great product. But know that everything we talked about today is kind of a standard run of a, let's call it medium complexity plastic component or series of plastic components. Things can scale up or scale down

00:16:26 Kevin Mako: Depending on the complexity of the product. Tim, thanks again for all your words of wisdom. We look forward to having you back on the show again and take care. I appreciate it, Kevin. Thank you so much. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast. If you found some value in the show, please do us a huge favor and hit the like button and subscribe. If you have any questions, guest suggestions, or anything else, feel free to reach out to

00:16:50 Kevin Mako: Us anytime at our email podcast@MakoDesign.com. This show is hosted by Kevin Mako, North America's leading expert on product development for hardware startups. And the podcast is produced by Mako Design, the original firm providing end-to-end consumer product development services tailored specifically to hardware startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:17:12 Kevin Mako: Take your product from idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com. That's M-A-K-O Design dot com. Thanks for joining and see you again soon.