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Old 09-16-2017, 04:24 PM   #21
Michael Thayne
 
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Default Re: [High-Tech] GURPS Industrial Economics (building on Low-Tech Companion 3)

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Originally Posted by RogerBW View Post
To generalise towards rules: the more of a thing you are planning to make, the more expensive the setup for the run will be, but the cheaper each item will be even accounting for its share of the setup cost. At one end you have the CNC rig and the 3d printer, somewhere in the middle the injection mould, at the other end the hardened-steel die.
How many products can be made by either injection mould or hardened-steel die? Isn't the former for plastic items and the latter for metal ones? (Pardon my ignorance if I'm wrong about that.)
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Old 09-16-2017, 05:32 PM   #22
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Default Re: [High-Tech] GURPS Industrial Economics (building on Low-Tech Companion 3)

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Do you have a sense of what percentage of the cost of the forge comes from the custom dies, vs. components that can be re-used for a different design?
That isn't how it's managed. You set up a forging shop, with some number of forging machines, and you have to replace dies regularly, because they wear.

I'd ballpark a forging machine at something like G$1,000,000, and a pair of dies at something like G$20,000. The large cost of tooling up for a new model of car is because you probably need several sets of dies for each part, and there are quite a few parts made this way.
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Old 09-16-2017, 10:29 PM   #23
Michael Thayne
 
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Default Re: [High-Tech] GURPS Industrial Economics (building on Low-Tech Companion 3)

Does anyone have a good sense of what the typical economy-of-scale curve looks like for manufacturing? Someone on Quora estimates the cost of a factory for a new car is around $600M. If you try to generalize this to some rule of thumb, maybe factory price = 20,000x retail price. That's a pretty silly rule, but might be useful for some purposes.
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Old 09-17-2017, 03:28 AM   #24
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Default Re: [High-Tech] GURPS Industrial Economics (building on Low-Tech Companion 3)

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Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
How many products can be made by either injection mould or hardened-steel die? Isn't the former for plastic items and the latter for metal ones? (Pardon my ignorance if I'm wrong about that.)
Sure, I wasn't looking at individual materials but at manufacturing methods.

FDM 3d printer ↔ injection moulding ABS
metal sintering printer ↔ forging and stamping
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Old 09-18-2017, 12:12 AM   #25
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Default Re: [High-Tech] GURPS Industrial Economics (building on Low-Tech Companion 3)

I'm sure someone could work the math up and give a ballpark figure:
https://books.google.com/books?id=2v...oduced&f=false
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Old 09-18-2017, 09:29 AM   #26
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Default Re: [High-Tech] GURPS Industrial Economics (building on Low-Tech Companion 3)

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Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
Does anyone have a good sense of what the typical economy-of-scale curve looks like for manufacturing? Someone on Quora estimates the cost of a factory for a new car is around $600M. If you try to generalize this to some rule of thumb, maybe factory price = 20,000x retail price. That's a pretty silly rule, but might be useful for some purposes.
I suspect a proper rule gives incrementally cheaper products for exponentially higher startup costs. And the more you make, the cheaper, but its a long climb.

I'm debating features of that curve. If you make a thousand times more, what's the discount? 50%? 90%? Also, what factory size should give you the base cost for the item? And yes, the base factory size should vary by the item, but how do you do that and still minimize complexity?

I've got a curve set in place that uses the size and range table, reading multiples of 10 for each step, but even that feels a little steep: you get a x3 reduction in cost per item for making a thousand times more items, and that doesn't feel right.
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