doodah

I didn't sell many Squizmo's to people like you. There are a number of people who bought them without even being "pitched." I did witness several awkward disagreements between significant others who had different tube squeezing habits. Different strokes for different folks.

Using the edge of the counter is certainly one way to get the contents of the tube toward the opening. The Squizmo stays in position so the toothpaste stays in the same place. I think you'd be surpised at how flat the tube is after a Squizmo has been run up it!

I absolutely did not recoup the cost of the testing jigs. Though I put a joy stick on the one jig that squeezed one tube into the other. At the makerfaires, people had much more fun with it than I would have ever anticipated.

That was more showmanship than a demonstration of my personal teeth cleaning routine!

Either way, however much toothpaste you use, this could potentially help you get more out of the tube. The payback would be longer, but that's not really why most people buy stuff like this.

Cool! I'll keep you and your company in mind in the future.

At the time, I think I made the right call. Now with this machine being available I'm reconsidering. The mold bases are pretty inexpensive too. I could make the same investment I was going to make several years ago, but have a machine if it doesn't work out rather than a hunk of precisely machined, rather useless, steel on the other side of the world.

It would fit into that size cube and the part doesn't have crazy tolerances. The shape complicates the mold significantly. Even after redesigning for moldability, there would be pretty complicated parting lines and shut offs.

Your situation was pretty different... Your company buys them, I was buying as an individual. You likely have a proven source, I didn't. It just wasn't a risk I was willing to take at that point in my life.

Chinese molds would have been 2x. Plus all that goes into working with China (as a very small fish at that) I was pretty concerned with paying $20k for what wouldn't amount to much more than a boat anchor.

After fulfilling around 700 units on Kickstarter, I sold another 300 at local Makerfaires and around 100 on Amazon (using Vendor Express.)

OP here. As someone who launched and fulfilled a small plastic gizmo on Kickstarter and then sold them on Amazon and at local Makerfaires, this equipment really spoke to me. Hence the submission. I 3D printed my product initially and found market fit at $5/piece, which didn't leave me with a lot of options to go into production and build a profitable business off it. 3D printing them was unsustainable. Which is why I'm not currently selling them.

In order to produce them cost effectively, I'd need molds that cost several times what this entire system cost. And after that I'd have to order thousands at a time to bring my cost down to say $1. I passed on that at the time and considered producing them myself but this machine didn't exist at the time. If it had, I might be making them now! There are other benchtop/low volume molding systems but nothing comes as close to automatic production as this one.

As for the company's site, this is fairly typical, but I'm sorry I didn't link to a better page. It certainly didn't get my blood boiling though. Them showing their price brings lots of good will. The CNC mill is also very interesting, with 4 motors driving the Z axis simultaneously.

I came across Open Cascade while researching how to create an Onshape app and/or a standalone system that would resemble Onshape but for a fairly specific use case. Realizing the complexity was out of my league, I put it on the back burner. Seeing it here though has reignited my interest in it. If I wanted to build an app that would launch in a tab in an Obshape document, could it be built with Open Cascade? Even if it can be, is there a better way to do it? How do these answers change if I also want to have a standalone system (still web based) to offer non Onshapers?

Thanks!