[pct-l] Injection molding - Bear cans

[yosaphina at mac.com (Nina Turner)]

Actually - creating a new injection mold is pretty capital intensive.
In my past company the cost of a mold could get up to $250,000 or more 
- depends on the size of the steel, how many modifications you make 
etc.  Of course a can is an easy shape, but I wonder how many 
iterations of the threads they had to go through.

Lexan costs about $2.00 a lb if you don't buy in large bulk, maybe 
more.  You have $4 for the material + you need to cover the cost of the 
set-up (sometimes takes 30min-1 hr), overage (scrap from slight optical 
imperfections which customers demand and dimensional tolerance 
requirements), and you have to cover the cost of the mold.  Injection 
molded products are cheap if you manufacture in high quantity, and keep 
your floor running (utilization).  I'm assuming they outsource that 
part so they also pay for a margin to the manufacturer.  For this size 
of can you probably pay to use at least a 500 ton press which isn't 
chump change either.  It isn't like making toys or thin-wall blow 
molded bottles.  The bigger the part, the bigger the press, and the 
more expensive it is since the outsource mfg also has to cover all his 
capital outlay.

So your price has to take all those factors into consideration, the 
competition, as well as the marketing, distribution, and 
engineering/testing costs.  People pay lots of money for an itty bitty 
titanium cup and other hiking gear.  For as small a market as this is, 
you cannot be in business being a low margin company because you don't 
make it up in volume.   If you are a company, you profit maximize.

That being said, my husband and I mostly disagree about bear can 
requirements.  But even my hubby(thru-hiker this year) thinks that 
everyone should carry one in Yosemite because that is hard core bear 
area.  He has seen mistakes made by others, and bear scat with tin foil 
in it.  I say if you are out there, you follow the requirements.  If 
you misjudge (and thru-hikers do dumb things too), you contribute to 
the problem of trouble bears.

Nina