Cardboard economics | Hacker News Reader

Cardboard economics

stevecoast.com

14 pointsfreyfogle14 comments

It's made of cardboard. You don't need a laser cutter to cut cardboard. Just use some fr&ckin' scissors. Also, just because someone won't sell millions of these things, doesn't mean they can't source materials at a price cheaper than buying them from Amazon. $3 worth of Velcro per unit? Seriously?

Some people here are really eager to burst somebody's bubble. Gosh.

Nobody would use scissors to fulfill a kickstarter project.

Where did you find that price listed for velcro? Was it a velcro kit for consumers that included pre-cut squares?

McMaster-Carr sells five foot by one inch lengths for only a dollar or two more than your list price, and that would be enough to produce many units..

When dealing with such a low cost item to begin with isn't some accuracy required to fully understand the margins of producing the thing?

The lenses were under a dollar each before off amazon before during Cardboards unveiling. While this does not mean you would be able to get them for that currently, it leads me to personally believe that if you bought in any sort of volume you could probably do much better than his $9 estimate.

It was based on the $4.50 cost in the comments from the reseller plus looking at alibaba. I'm not claiming it's super accurate.

Well, remember that the dodocase you mention sells for $25 with RFID, not $20. So you don't have to be off by a whole heck of a lot on each individual component to end up with them selling the thing at cost, or maybe even making a little on each unit they sell.

There is a new listing on taobao for a plastic device which seems to be compatible with google cardboard. It costs about 25USD.

http://tb.cn/eLdYpYy

Does anyone know who built the cardboard models for Google? It would be nice to know how much Google paid per unit.

They were die-cut which ~60-80 to be made (from a supplied .eps). The actual cardboard cutting/cost for that size, at a common weight would be <$0.80c/unit for quantities of 100+.

Came to raise the possibility of die-cutting, as I've looked into it quickly in the past for another project. (Cutting panels for a geodesic dome.) Was rather surprised then that the tooling costs were so low.

Appreciate you taking the time to provide more details.

You can tell by the nicks on the side that they've been diecut - those nicks are created by small nicks on the blade, usually made during manufacture.

I'd be happy enough to pay for just the cut cardboard. The other parts and assembly are easy. Cutting the cardboard with a box-cutter is a bit annoying. I've cut everything except for the round/round-ish holes, which I plan to do with small stabbing motions.

Can you recommend a place to get these die-cut? The online quotation I got for laser-cutting is about 10 times that price.

Contact your local print-finishers, I'm in New Zealand..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com