Open Metal Detector Project Charter

[Aziz]

Hi guys,

I'm missing the real goal of such a project. Remember, companies have the goal to make profits.

What a goal could have a hobbyist?
- Learning: How detectors work?
- Fun: DIY, smelling solder fume, ...?
- Poor man's solution: DIY to make it very cheap by yourself?
- Sport: Challenging the best?
- Profit & Living: Small production line?
- The intellectual challenge: Making something sophisticated, you can't even buy.
..

What are you going to do? What's your goal?
Cheers,
Aziz

[Davor]

Yeah, I think the way to go is off the shelf. It will surely not look Mickey Mouse-ish like ace 250, but heck, design is not the strong point of the most detectors I've seen. Lets consider this a non-issue.

My reality here is that by a small scale production on my own I can make an average CEO's income, but that is beside the point because I don't want to do that, yet. The point is that there are fellow hobbyists that do see it as an opportunity to make living from projects such as these, and the incredible prices of the top of the line detectors offered by the market leading companies that may just make it happen.

Frankly, I can't see any other electronics market that may offer such return, not even HiFi because they are heavily loaded with marketing, while this market is still self propelled, and far far away from being saturated.

I'm sure there are countries with eager hobbyists that could step in and find it a good opportunity to feed their families. In a way it is a perfect production/distribution chain as well - your shipment and repairs costs are incredibly low because you buy and fix things at your local hobbyist. Ivconic once mentioned some unbelievable costs of sending a rig to be repaired abroad. That counts too.

[sido]

Sid,

You can surely find PCB manufacturers. That's not hard. What's hard is to find companies that do everything else, and will do it for a reasonable cost. How much does tooling cost for a tubing swager? An injection mold for cam locks? Then fab houses want to run 10,000 pcs... you only want 1000 or 100? The costs go up astronomically.- Carl

Carl, have you ever considered there are ways around this. Think outside the box. There are already Manufactured detector stems and coils housings out there and no need to re-invent the wheel. Example that comes to mind is a particular line of Gold Century detectors that produce a quality stem and coil housing that rivals the big boy's. Most of them a crap though, but some are made of high quality materials with carbon fiber lower shafts. If need to be with slight modification to the Arm cup rest can be produced for any such detector stem already in mass production, providing you are able to licence part of that existing product, but i am sure there are ways around this.

The point is, if all you want to do is hand-build one-a-week and sell them for prestige, then self-production is a solution. If you want to seriously get something back for your efforts, self-production is foolish. The up-front costs are enormous; splitting the costs amongst 10 people also splits the returns amongst 10 people. The production planning, coordination, and back end work will eat you alive. And it doesn't take much to go wrong to sink the whole deal. Look at the Nemesis. Dave would be in his 3rd year of sales by now if he had chosen a different path.Carl

Agree with the fact that it will not take much for something to go wrong, seeing everyone involved is geographically placed all over the world and co-operation and effort is and will be limited. Splitting the cost would not be a issue when you consider the start up cost will be at minimal. As for sales, service and repair the personal are already here.

Detector companies have everything set up & ready, including marketing, sales, and service. The cost of producing 100 units to test out the market is almost nothing. And if the product takes off, ramping up to 100/week or more is easy. And all you have to do at that point is sit back and cash your royalty checks. Oh yeah, and work on that next great idea.

- Carl

The whole idea of looking at other option's is to minimize the initial setup costs. Royalties, what royalties.....i can say no-one will see a cent here, just a part of corporate greed. The first unit in production does not have to have the flashiest cosmetics (Detector box). It only needs to be practical, usable and reliable. Sales and marketing is another thing, put a working product in the market, you already have a medium such as forums that will not only allow people to see the progress in design but will have the necessary feedback to see if the product is fit for use and changes that can be implemented in say version 2.

There are ways of minimizing substantial initial start up costs, such as the examples listed above. If someone thinks that you will start making money from the first line of production, well they should re-think there short term intentions.

I say stick to hobby kits for now, get a working detector out there. A circuit diagram out on its own wont cut and if keep changing the design as mentioned before......well you will be doing this for years to come with no end result.

Sid

[Carl-NC]

Sid,

You can surely find PCB manufacturers. That's not hard. What's hard is to find companies that do everything else, and will do it for a reasonable cost. How much does tooling cost for a tubing swager? An injection mold for cam locks? Then fab houses want to run 10,000 pcs... you only want 1000 or 100? The costs go up astronomically.

The point is, if all you want to do is hand-build one-a-week and sell them for prestige, then self-production is a solution. If you want to seriously get something back for your efforts, self-production is foolish. The up-front costs are enormous; splitting the costs amongst 10 people also splits the returns amongst 10 people. The production planning, coordination, and back end work will eat you alive. And it doesn't take much to go wrong to sink the whole deal. Look at the Nemesis. Dave would be in his 3rd year of sales by now if he had chosen a different path.

Detector companies have everything set up & ready, including marketing, sales, and service. The cost of producing 100 units to test out the market is almost nothing. And if the product takes off, ramping up to 100/week or more is easy. And all you have to do at that point is sit back and cash your royalty checks. Oh yeah, and work on that next great idea.

- Carl

[chudster]

"Forget about any kind of large scale self-production. You can't do it. Don't even try"

Carl, i would say your partially incorrect, sort of misleading........... There are ways to get a large scale operation at minimal cost and make some descent profit out of it. Lets say that a working design is established and known to be working and ready for production. There are Manufacturers of electronics products that are willing to work with you at minimal cost setup to yourself or in this case a collective group here. I will mention the Chinese, just bear in mind it has been a hot topic of debate of late and no intention by me to fuel any further fire here, but only to explain how it can be done.

If say 10 people are involved in developing a working detector here, this can be taken to a Manufacturer where an agreement can be made that the final product is not going to be owned by either partys, in this case the 10 people involved or the Manufacturer themselves, but what can be agreed is exclusive rights to each individual parties to sell the final given product in there own niche market, country etc and the remaining potential selling markets is up to the Manufacturer as to where else they would want to see the product sold too. The only exclusive rights to part of the product is the Manufacturer owns the tooling, dies, molds etc due to the overall initial cost setup involved and the majority of money invested by them in producing them.

This has be done in the past and continues to be done in their neck of the woods as known Manufacturing practices, where individual(s) and Manufacturer receive profits from any such sales. You obviously do have to buy the final product off them as minimum units agreed upon, obviously at a reduced price rate. The more units that are sold the better for all and your initial small investment is recouped fairly quick this way.

I can tell you that the Manufacturer already has 10 PR's in specific locations around the world, where they would of not had otherwise. It starts to look better now, doesn't it?

Making massed produced circuit boards here from 10 developers is not the problem or issues. Its the cosmetic and final half descent professional looking product where problems are encountered.

Upon agreement the tooling cost's are shared between each parties involved where most of the cost goes back to the Manufacturer if they are convinced enough and see the potential of the end product.

So basically where it would have cost 100% total to the individuals, the total initial investment cost now ends up being around the 30-40% mark as a minimum. Now split that between 10 individuals.....now you can see that each ones initial funding cost is around the 3-4% mark and obviously looks more like a feasable proposition when figures are presented in this way.

So, when someone says it cannot be done, then consider the above as it can be done.....possibly the (one and only) way to be able to mass produce a final product at a minimal small risk in initial investment costs to individual(s).

Sid

Having been involved making products 'fit for use', remember that there is a big gap between a design that can be used by an electronic hobbyist (who understands the design and its foibles) and a product for the field that is waterproof (to some level), immune to salt and dust ingress, temperature stable (and operational), rugged and simple to operate with good ergonomics. Then lets talk about manufacturability! That 'productionisation' is really underestimated at the R&D level that most of us are operating at and I would imagine is a part of the design and engineering that is not of interest to many- however some of those constraints need to be applied to the design from early on.

I think that we need to draw a line in the sand at what kind of designs we are aiming for as being 'open'. At the moment pulling together what I see is that the charter principle should simply be "The possibility of profits." and leave it at that. That might mean that an open design is made for hobbyists and then taken to the next level to production design by those who wish to or maybe by industry with blessing. It does not push us to the 'slimy corporatism' end of the scale but neither does it exclude all commercial aspirations or uses. It allows for people the possibility to get back some of their development costs (through some mechanism) and is consistent with the views that have been expressed by a number of people that they are doing this as a hobby but do not want to completely exclude that some collateral benefit or their costs might come back.

On another note I am pleased to announce that we have quorum. Enough people have come forward to put their cards on the table, identified themselves and provided diversity of view that is representative of the forum. They are people free of industry influence and also largely free of antipathy to industry although its inevitable that some have battle scars! Given that BW's situation has catalyzed this discussion that is not inappropriate.

Please keep posting thoughts and ideas on this thread as it is all being taken into consideration and look out for the result of our coffee discussion!

Chudster

[sido]

"Forget about any kind of large scale self-production. You can't do it. Don't even try"

Carl, i would say your partially incorrect, sort of misleading........... There are ways to get a large scale operation at minimal cost and make some descent profit out of it. Lets say that a working design is established and known to be working and ready for production. There are Manufacturers of electronics products that are willing to work with you at minimal cost setup to yourself or in this case a collective group here. I will mention the Chinese, just bear in mind it has been a hot topic of debate of late and no intention by me to fuel any further fire here, but only to explain how it can be done.

If say 10 people are involved in developing a working detector here, this can be taken to a Manufacturer where an agreement can be made that the final product is not going to be owned by either partys, in this case the 10 people involved or the Manufacturer themselves, but what can be agreed is exclusive rights to each individual parties to sell the final given product in there own niche market, country etc and the remaining potential selling markets is up to the Manufacturer as to where else they would want to see the product sold too. The only exclusive rights to part of the product is the Manufacturer owns the tooling, dies, molds etc due to the overall initial cost setup involved and the majority of money invested by them in producing them.

This has be done in the past and continues to be done in their neck of the woods as known Manufacturing practices, where individual(s) and Manufacturer receive profits from any such sales. You obviously do have to buy the final product off them as minimum units agreed upon, obviously at a reduced price rate. The more units that are sold the better for all and your initial small investment is recouped fairly quick this way.

I can tell you that the Manufacturer already has 10 PR's in specific locations around the world, where they would of not had otherwise. It starts to look better now, doesn't it?

Making massed produced circuit boards here from 10 developers is not the problem or issues. Its the cosmetic and final half descent professional looking product where problems are encountered.

Upon agreement the tooling cost's are shared between each parties involved where most of the cost goes back to the Manufacturer if they are convinced enough and see the potential of the end product.

So basically where it would have cost 100% total to the individuals, the total initial investment cost now ends up being around the 30-40% mark as a minimum. Now split that between 10 individuals.....now you can see that each ones initial funding cost is around the 3-4% mark and obviously looks more like a feasable proposition when figures are presented in this way.

So, when someone says it cannot be done, then consider the above as it can be done.....possibly the (one and only) way to be able to mass produce a final product at a minimal small risk in initial investment costs to individual(s).

Sid

[Davor]

where?

[hdphilip]

Would you buy one before an oscilloscope though Philip? I know which one I would rather have if I could only have one.

hands down a oscilloscope, delayed sweep would be great, at least a 20mhz, would be a good place to start, and also maybe build moodz unipi computer interface, it makes the perfect low cost pulse generator for PI metal detector timimng,

Philip

oh, i just posted a new video in my thread, if anyones insterested.

[Carl-NC]

andyt and Davor make some good points. You can either develop in the public domain as has largely been the model for Geotech, or you can all sign an NDA and develop privately, with the hope of making something off the end result. We tried the latter (here on Geotech) without success. There were several reasons but the bottom line was lack of cohesion.

Forget about any kind of large scale self-production. You can't do it. Don't even try. Either find a niche market and make yourself comfortable with selling a few units a month, or find a manufacturer to partner with. Nexus, Red Heat, and Blisstool are examples of the former. Do the latter if you want to make more money. If you go for a partnership get a solid concept working well. Don't worry about the interface (Blisstool has, what, 13 knobs/switches?) or the looks. The partner company will get it the rest of the way. Just make it perform.

- Carl

[andyt]

No offense, but I think we all are well past the powerpoint and NDAs, and especially playing ball with the "big players". They are in the game, let them have it.

As for production, there is no such thing as a large scale production in metal detectors business. The largest manufacturers are, well, manufacturers, as in manually assembling the bits and pieces to a modest quantity of detectors per day. They all pot their own coils and they all test them in a small scale, and the whole message they send to the rest of the world of electronics is HEY - IT WORKS!!! YOU CAN MAKE NICE THINGS IN THE WEST TOO.

Does it mean that I will produce my own 6 lines of sexy detectors in polished boxes and bollocks manuals, and hope for knocking down sales of a "big" manufacturer? For Pits sake no! Have you ever seen a formula 1 car on sale in a shop? Or the company that backs it up making big money on such product? Usually such toys are more likely to ruin their mentors. Such marketing models may work in fashion business, but not elsewhere.

As for design, only three words: off the shelf. Cheapest, totally predictable, and come in different colours too. Why overdo it?

I can make a single unit for my own pleasure, or one unit per month at my hobby pace to sell a fellow detectorist with modest provision, and perhaps 10 units if pushed hard. So does everyone else. Will it threat the big market players? I don't think so, but it could keep my hobby afloat.

No offense taken from here I understand I have jumped into this thread at my peril! But if you don't have NDAs and you have shared information that affects your ability to patent...which is what I was trying to stress. You can still make things without patents, but to make things that several people have contributed to, make a profit...you also need some upfront understanding of the sharing of profits.
I design electronics products which I have licensed, sold out right and sold through my company. I just hoped to share a little bit of my experience with playing with the big companies and surviving as a small player with some smaller products.

And you have described your niche market

Oh one parting word... if you ever want to sell through distribution selling the cheapest of a number of competitors is a trap. I tried selling a product that was as good and half the price of the competition but the distributors would not touch it despite great magazine reviews and customer reviews on the net. They basically felt that they made twice the profit on my competitors product and they would have to work twice as hard to sell twice the number of my product to get the same profit. My competitors made a lot more money than me, spent it on advertising and awareness and continued to grow their distributor network.

Direct sales are still good though!!! :P

[Tinkerer]

Keeping the hobby afloat, might be the common denominator of most of the members of the forum.

Tinkerer

[Davor]

...
If you want to commercialise, NDAs are required as the absolute minimum.
...
When they are volunteers you have to massage their egos and they do what they like.

No offense, but I think we all are well past the powerpoint and NDAs, and especially playing ball with the "big players". They are in the game, let them have it.

As for production, there is no such thing as a large scale production in metal detectors business. The largest manufacturers are, well, manufacturers, as in manually assembling the bits and pieces to a modest quantity of detectors per day. They all pot their own coils and they all test them in a small scale, and the whole message they send to the rest of the world of electronics is HEY - IT WORKS!!! YOU CAN MAKE NICE THINGS IN THE WEST TOO.

Does it mean that I will produce my own 6 lines of sexy detectors in polished boxes and bollocks manuals, and hope for knocking down sales of a "big" manufacturer? For Pits sake no! Have you ever seen a formula 1 car on sale in a shop? Or the company that backs it up making big money on such product? Usually such toys are more likely to ruin their mentors. Such marketing models may work in fashion business, but not elsewhere.

As for design, only three words: off the shelf. Cheapest, totally predictable, and come in different colours too. Why overdo it?

I can make a single unit for my own pleasure, or one unit per month at my hobby pace to sell a fellow detectorist with modest provision, and perhaps 10 units if pushed hard. So does everyone else. Will it threat the big market players? I don't think so, but it could keep my hobby afloat.

[andyt]

sometimes logic analyzers are good to have when you want to see some good measurements, unless you have a expensive digital oscilloscope

philip

Would you buy one before an oscilloscope though Philip? I know which one I would rather have if I could only have one.

[hdphilip]

sometimes logic analyzers are good to have when you want to see some good measurements, unless you have a expensive digital oscilloscope

philip

[andyt]

...
2nd point: I have no laboratory but I have an associate with electronic workshop/studio with oscilloscope etc.... and Im thinking to buy 1 logic analyzer and +1 soldering station + 1 pcb insulator.
Count me in.

Hi tjmlena
Dont buy a logic analyzer, they are rarely used unless you have a complex digital board, buy your own oscilloscope.
Andy