Rod Holder Concept 6/concept 3 update:

Last crawled date: 1 year, 10 months ago

This is an update to my third concept design, “The Hammerhead”. It can also be used with my previous concept, “The Blade”. It uses the exact same base as the Hammerhead but the carrier shown here is completely new in design. It offers a cheaper and more easily built option from which to choose.

Materials:

-Aluminum
-Plastic
-wood

This design is simple, super functional and strong and very cheap and easy to manufacture. As the competition wares on, I’ve noticed a lot of entries using bowed steel Roding as the material for the main rod holder. I really liked that design style, structural and aesthetically but my concern is that the cost involved with making it would be high because a welder would need to be hired and the welding process would be time consuming and intricate. I wanted to leave welding out of the equation.

Notes on manufacturing:

This design uses just a simple piece of aluminum as the main backbone for the rod carrier, .4” squared. The aluminum can be made from simple, raw stock purchased at an aluminum supplier. It then has a simple machining operation performed on it to round the edges and corners and to cut the two screw holes out. It’s then annealed and bent, preferably by automation. No welding is involved.

Two plastic components are attached by two screws on the front and back of the aluminum backbone to grasp the rod and hold it in place. The plastic can either be injection molded or 3D printed but IM is the cheaper solution. These would be the ideal materials, however wood can be substituted.

Because these two components are bolt on’s, it allows for interchangeability. The idea would be to start out with a single rod holder design and then introduce other accessories as sales progress, dual rod holder, specialty rod holders etc. It’s a very powerful design concept and allows for adaptability and extra revenue streams later on. This is the first design to deliberately incorporate "interchangeability" into it, I think it's an important criteria to consider, from a business perspective and for product performance.

Finally, the backbone assembly is held in place by two CNC machined aluminum pressure plates. When the knob is loosened the rod carrier can be slide back and forth for different inclinations and rotated 360 degrees.

thanks for looking

Jonathan-

***UPDATE!!

I have received some pricing estimates for injection molding from a popular turnkey manufacturer. It gives a real world idea of the pricing for some of the plastic parts. These quotes are 100% real world and the parts could be at your doorstep in 15 business days. Still waiting on quotes for the CNC aluminum parts.

The knob part (Knob_concept6.sldprt) if made from plastic as opposed to wood.

- tooling cost : 3645$ US dollars, good for unlimited usage
qty: 25-100 = 2.9$ per unit
1000 = 2.64$ per unit
5,000 = 1.79$ per unit
10,000 = 1.75$ per unit

the rear plastic part (carrierbackpart_concept6.sldpart)

tooling cost: 6480$US
qty: 25-1000 = 3.09 per unit
5000 = 2.27 per unit
10000 = 2.22 per unit

The carrier front part(carrierfrontpart_concept6.sldprt)
tooling cost: 6140$
qty: 25-1000 = 2.9$US per unit
5000= 2.07$US per unit
10,000= 2.03$US per unit.