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Out of the Box Models 1/72 Boeing 737-100 (Crowdfunding)


John Thompson

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32 minutes ago, orionfield said:

Thanks for clearing that up! So, maybe it would be worth it to do a 320/420 kit, since they would have the smaller tail and different wing than what's supplied in the Heller Kit

Dan,

 

There is a great guide to the different B707 variants here.

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12 hours ago, orionfield said:

Thats why we do the crowdfunding. If we get a enough takers to fund the development, then we know the idea is sound. We also print everything to order, so there's no overhead there. 

Not an expert in marketing and sales psychology but, I do think that most purchases will be driven by the low price and "free gift" mentality. Personally, I wouldn't go as far as saying the kit will sell well if the crowdfunding "slices" sell well. For that to work, the "slice" should be something like 50-75% of the final kit price. If it sell well at that price, the kit might sell comparably well.

 

I might be wrong, though! Most of you will have a better insight on how these things work...

 

Cheers,

Cristian

Edited by armored76
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I have just signed up for this, don't normally do civil subjects but looks like a venture well worth encouraging and perhaps a way to see subjects produced that will never be covered by mainstream injection-moulding manufacturers and surely any cleaning up of parts cannot be harder than the Merlin Models TSR2 for those with long memories and recurring nightmares.

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10 hours ago, armored76 said:

Not an expert in marketing and sales psychology but, I do think that most purchases will be driven by the low price and "free gift" mentality. Personally, I wouldn't go as far as saying the kit will sell well if the crowdfunding "slices" sell well. For that to work, the "slice" should be something like 50-75% of the final kit price. If it sell well at that price, the kit might sell comparably well.

 

I might be wrong, though! Most of you will have a better insight on how these things work...

 

Cheers,

Cristian

At the very least, once it developed, we wont have a bunch sitting around costing us money. Just got our own 3D printer set up, it wont be able to print anytihng big, but it will do all the smaller detail parts and things at 25 micron layers, and its 2000% cheaper than having parts printed at a vendor like shapeways.

3 hours ago, Des said:

I have just signed up for this, don't normally do civil subjects but looks like a venture well worth encouraging and perhaps a way to see subjects produced that will never be covered by mainstream injection-moulding manufacturers and surely any cleaning up of parts cannot be harder than the Merlin Models TSR2 for those with long memories and recurring nightmares.

There were 2 military versions of the 737-100, Used by the Mexican Air Force and the Luftwaffe, if that helps. 

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On 6/13/2018 at 10:48 AM, orionfield said:

No idea. It depends on the print cost of the parts, which we wont know until we start test printing later in the process.

 You don't have any idea what the final production costs will be?  That's alarming.  A rough cost estimate should be one of the first things any business does when looking into a new project.

 

From my back-of-the-envelope estimate, it will cost you about $150 to print a simple hollow tube the size of a 1/72 727 fuselage on an MJM machine.  Adding wings, engines, tail and other details will easily double that, meaning it will cost you, out of pocket, $300 or more to manufacture every single kit.  Which means that you will lose $270+ on every single 'pre-order'.  That seems... untenable.

 

Switching to FDM would drop your costs, but not by that much.  It will still cost you more than $30 to print each kit, especially if you're outsourcing production.  It would also mean a dramatic reduction in quality - Z-axis resolution will probably be 2 - 4x coarser, and X/Y resolution will be an order of magnitude lower.  It might be acceptable on a solid display model, but it's not going to be sufficient for what most scale modellers expect.  And again, it's still going to cost you far more than $30 to manufacture each kit.

 

Simply put, you are currently selling a tiny 1/160 scale tank for $35.  There is no way you can manufacture a 1/72 727, via 3D printing, for less than that.  Shipping alone, from the US to the UK, will cost at least $25 - 35.

 

So, since you've said you're all about transparency, here are a few questions your posts have raised for me:

 

You are trying to raise $600 to produce the kit - 20 orders @ $30.  What specifically is that money being used for?  And how will you fund the $6000+ that it will cost to manufacture those 20 kits?

What is your development timeline?  When do you expect to start designing the kit?  When will you start prototyping?  When will you start production? 

Why are you using an e-commerce storefront rather than an established crowdfunding web site?  A crowdfunding site would offer peace of mind via recompense for backers if the project falls through.  With your e-commerce storefront, customers will have as little as 60 days from the date of purchase to demand a refund if things go south.  After that, all they have is your word that you'll refund their money.

 

I would also ask who else is involved in the project?  You're giving the impression that there is a large team behind the company, yet you seem to be the only person who is publicly visible.  Who are the other executive officers?

Where are you actually located.  Your website says 'Central New York', but your profile says you're in California. 

 

Oh, and one more: why is your website still showing "Only 20 units left!" even after people have signed up?  Why isn't that number going down?

Edited by ICMF
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9 hours ago, ICMF said:

 You don't have any idea what the final production costs will be?  That's alarming.  A rough cost estimate should be one of the first things any business does when looking into a new project.

 

From my back-of-the-envelope estimate, it will cost you about $150 to print a simple hollow tube the size of a 1/72 727 fuselage on an MJM machine.  Adding wings, engines, tail and other details will easily double that, meaning it will cost you, out of pocket, $300 or more to manufacture every single kit.  Which means that you will lose $270+ on every single 'pre-order'.  That seems... untenable.

 

Switching to FDM would drop your costs, but not by that much.  It will still cost you more than $30 to print each kit, especially if you're outsourcing production.  It would also mean a dramatic reduction in quality - Z-axis resolution will probably be 2 - 4x coarser, and X/Y resolution will be an order of magnitude lower.  It might be acceptable on a solid display model, but it's not going to be sufficient for what most scale modellers expect.  And again, it's still going to cost you far more than $30 to manufacture each kit.

 

Simply put, you are currently selling a tiny 1/160 scale tank for $35.  There is no way you can manufacture a 1/72 727, via 3D printing, for less than that.  Shipping alone, from the US to the UK, will cost at least $25 - 35.

 

So, since you've said you're all about transparency, here are a few questions your posts have raised for me:

 

You are trying to raise $600 to produce the kit - 20 orders @ $30.  What specifically is that money being used for?  And how will you fund the $6000+ that it will cost to manufacture those 20 kits?

What is your development timeline?  When do you expect to start designing the kit?  When will you start prototyping?  When will you start production? 

Why are you using an e-commerce storefront rather than an established crowdfunding web site?  A crowdfunding site would offer peace of mind via recompense for backers if the project falls through.  With your e-commerce storefront, customers will have as little as 60 days from the date of purchase to demand a refund if things go south.  After that, all they have is your word that you'll refund their money.

 

I would also ask who else is involved in the project?  You're giving the impression that there is a large team behind the company, yet you seem to be the only person who is publicly visible.  Who are the other executive officers?

Where are you actually located.  Your website says 'Central New York', but your profile says you're in California. 

 

Oh, and one more: why is your website still showing "Only 20 units left!" even after people have signed up?  Why isn't that number going down?

Okay, let me see what I can clear up here. 

 

Right now, as I'm sure you know, we're working the Yak-9T that was funded about a week ago. That is our first aircraft project, and one of our first projects that we started outside of N scale trains, with the exception of the 1/72 Redstone Rockets. I should have been a bit more specific about not knowing what the print will cost, because we have a good idea about how much it will cost, but I don't want to commit to a number until I get more information.  Of course its going to cost a lot more than the $30 we're charging, and honestly, these two projects are more for us to show what we can do and hopefully showcase the benefits of being able to take take a customer's idea and make a viable kit that can be printed on demand. 

 

We're trying to streamline our development process to move faster, and deliver a products in just a few months. We would start designing the kit as soon as the crowdfund ends. We have a partnership with a 3D printing vendor in Santa Cara, CA called GoEngineer, and they give us discounts on bulk printing, but mostly we are eating the cost on this one. 

 

We're using shopify because that's what we have at the moment. And these Crowdfunds were kind of a test to see if the concept worked, which is why we hosted them on our store, and not kickstarter. As for return policy, we have no limits. We can refund anyone's money whenever they ask for one, anywhere along the process. And yes, all they have is my word, and I swear to god, that I an honest person, and would bend over backwards for any of my customers. 

 

Myself, and my cofounder, Shawn King, are the only two employees of Out of the Box, a bunch of our friends volunteer and help us out, here and there. We use a freelancing service for our engineers, and they bid on our projects. So far that's worked for us, but as we grow and gain capital, I want to hire an engineer to work for us full time.  As far as location, Shawn lives in Syracuse, NY, and we are a New York registered LLC. I live in San Jose, CA, because that's where my day job is. I am a User Experience Architect for Tavant Technologies. We have no other executives. We don't have an office, or a Brick and mortar presence, both Shawn and I work from our respective homes on Out of the Box. 

 

The 20 left is the simplest one to answer, the plugin that generates that is manually operated, and I've been traveling all day and haven't updated it yet. 

 

Let me know if I can answer anything else.

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On 6/15/2018 at 6:14 PM, orionfield said:

There were 2 military versions of the 737-100, Used by the Mexican Air Force and the Luftwaffe, if that helps. 

Rather hoping that Mexico will get round to painting their 100 series aircraft in the same overall grey colour scheme as their later 737 variants, makes a very nice contrast with the full colour national markings.

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6 hours ago, Des said:

Rather hoping that Mexico will get round to painting their 100 series aircraft in the same overall grey colour scheme as their later 737 variants, makes a very nice contrast with the full colour national markings.

Do they still have their -100s? I thought they were retired? 

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1 hour ago, orionfield said:

Do they still have their -100s? I thought they were retired? 

You are quite right , retired a while back but I had been misled by looking at a page of image thumbnails and having my hopes raised by the date an image had been  posted rather than the date it was taken.

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2 hours ago, Des said:

You are quite right , retired a while back but I had been misled by looking at a page of image thumbnails and having my hopes raised by the date an image had been  posted rather than the date it was taken.

I hate when they do that! I actually can't find any Luftwaffe photos though. 

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I haven't been following this thread closely but I don't think the Luftwaffe had the 737s, but Lufthansa was the originator of the first order, IIRC. Maybe their Airforce got 1 or two after Lufthansa moved on to other a/c??

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13 hours ago, orionfield said:

I actually can't find any Luftwaffe photos though. 

Cannot find any either although I have an idea that they may have been overall white with a thick blue band along the line of the cockpit and cabin windows but memory but be confusing them with something completely different.

 

From what I can find it looks as if  they were not in service long , November 1971 to September 1972 , were ex-Avianca who had operated them from new , were allocated the civil registrations D-ABWA and WB although these were later also carried by Condor 737-330s , and were returned to Boeing before re-sale to Aloha and subsequent operators.       

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On 6/15/2018 at 10:12 PM, orionfield said:

 

Let me know if I can answer anything else.

 

Okay: Why are you 'crowdfunding' in the first place?  You would lose less money if you just developed the kit on your own and put it on sale.  If you as a business can't afford to fund the (relatively paltry) $600 development costs, how can customers expect you to pay the much larger ($6000+) production costs.

 

For anyone who has put money into this, or is thinking of putting money into this, here are some figures to consider:

 

  • A hollow, 1/72 727 fuselage, with a wall thickness of 2mm will use about .36L - 454g - of resin.  (note: this does not include support material, which will increase materials/print costs)
  • Formlabs' basic resin costs $150/L.
  • This means the fuselage alone will cost $54 in materials if it's printed in-house.  (note: this does not include consumables like resin vats, IPA, gloves, power costs or depreciation)
  • Stratasys' resin is about $325/kg.
  • This means the fuselage would cost $140 in resin alone if it's outsourced. (note: again, this does not include any of the $200/kg support material, and assumes the service works for free)
  • This is just for the fuselage.  Again, the wings, tail, engines and undercarriage will easily double the material volume.
  • So as a basic, back of the envelope calculation, the raw materials for the kit will cost between $100 - 300 at an absolute minimum.
  • The cheapest shipping option USPS has to ship a 1kg box from the US to the UK is $35.  Priority mail is $60.
  • In other words, your pre-order price for a very expensive kit doesn't even cover the cost of shipping(!).
  • By way of comparison: a 1/72 Boeing 727 fuselage would use (at least) 17x more resin than the 1/160 M88 listed on their website, which they are selling for $5 more than the 727 pre-order.  And that doesn't include shipping.
  • Depending on your payment method, you will have anywhere between 30 - 180 days to demand a refund if you change your mind.  After that, you are entirely at the mercy of the seller. 

 

Maybe everything will work out fine and people actually will get an acceptable kit at the end of the day, but I am extremely skeptical.  If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Buyer beware.

 

 

(and I'd note: this goes for the Yak as well - I'm seeing some alarming things in that thread, too - it's just not as obviously egregious as 'crowdfunding' what should be a $500+ kit for less than the price of postage.)

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The post from OOB Models  above does seem to answer your questions. It looks like they are doing this as a test the water exercise and are  not expecting to make a profit.......

 Of course its going to cost a lot more than the $30 we're charging, and honestly, these two projects are more for us to show what we can do and hopefully showcase the benefits of being able to take a customer's idea and make a viable kit that can be printed on demand.

Having had some experience with the 3D printing industry I can tell you there are substantial problems around cost, product appearance, reliability of supply etc. Our experience has been less than good so far but we think it is a valuable tool for the future. For no other reason I figured I could afford US$20 to be in it even if the result is a lemon.

I am curious - are you involved in the modelling aspects of 3D printing? What does ICMF stand for?

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7 hours ago, Ed Russell said:

Our experience has been less than good so far but we think it is a valuable tool for the future. For no other reason I figured I could afford US$20 to be in it even if the result is a lemon.

 

Unlike yourself I have no experience of 3D printing but very much share your thoughts regarding its potential and your reasons for supporting this venture.     If it expands the envelope a bit that will be great and if an even halfway presentable kit results that will be even better. 

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11 hours ago, Ed Russell said:

I am curious - are you involved in the modelling aspects of 3D printing?

Yes.  For nearly a decade.  I know what I'm talking about.  More specifically, I know what it costs.  And because of that knowledge, this raises several alarm bells for me.

 

Even though I'd love to see a large-scale 727 kit, there is absolutely no way I would invest in this.  Not because I'm worried that it may not be very good, but because I have little confidence that there will be any kit whatsoever.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe everything will work out fine. But personally, I'd rather buy a lottery ticket - it's cheaper, with a bigger upside, and I'm more confident in the odds.

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Well said Ian, I kept thinking that as well. 

 

I took the plunge so to speak and ordered one last night. Having the option for a full refund was the deciding factor. If produced it'll sit nicely in my stash beside the 5 1/72 BPK 737-200 I have.

Speaking of which, on the side of the box for the 1/72 BPK CRJ200 was a future release notice about a 737-100...

Just putting that out there in case no one was aware. BPK have gone quiet recently so this printed kit may be the only chance of getting one (or cutting down a -200).

 

Jeff 

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On 6/21/2018 at 7:25 AM, ICMF said:

I know what I'm talking about............ Even though I'd love to see a large-scale 727 kit

I'm always suspicious of that phrase but I will help................ you can get a 727 now, assuming you mean 1/72 by "large scale".

https://www.scalemates.com/search.php?q="Boeing 727" 1:72&section=2

 

Irish Clothing Manufacturers Federation?

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On 6/19/2018 at 1:42 PM, ICMF said:

 

Okay: Why are you 'crowdfunding' in the first place?  You would lose less money if you just developed the kit on your own and put it on sale.  If you as a business can't afford to fund the (relatively paltry) $600 development costs, how can customers expect you to pay the much larger ($6000+) production costs.

 

For anyone who has put money into this, or is thinking of putting money into this, here are some figures to consider:

 

  • A hollow, 1/72 727 fuselage, with a wall thickness of 2mm will use about .36L - 454g - of resin.  (note: this does not include support material, which will increase materials/print costs)
  • Formlabs' basic resin costs $150/L.
  • This means the fuselage alone will cost $54 in materials if it's printed in-house.  (note: this does not include consumables like resin vats, IPA, gloves, power costs or depreciation)
  • Stratasys' resin is about $325/kg.
  • This means the fuselage would cost $140 in resin alone if it's outsourced. (note: again, this does not include any of the $200/kg support material, and assumes the service works for free)
  • This is just for the fuselage.  Again, the wings, tail, engines and undercarriage will easily double the material volume.
  • So as a basic, back of the envelope calculation, the raw materials for the kit will cost between $100 - 300 at an absolute minimum.
  • The cheapest shipping option USPS has to ship a 1kg box from the US to the UK is $35.  Priority mail is $60.
  • In other words, your pre-order price for a very expensive kit doesn't even cover the cost of shipping(!).
  • By way of comparison: a 1/72 Boeing 727 fuselage would use (at least) 17x more resin than the 1/160 M88 listed on their website, which they are selling for $5 more than the 727 pre-order.  And that doesn't include shipping.
  • Depending on your payment method, you will have anywhere between 30 - 180 days to demand a refund if you change your mind.  After that, you are entirely at the mercy of the seller. 

 

Maybe everything will work out fine and people actually will get an acceptable kit at the end of the day, but I am extremely skeptical.  If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Buyer beware.

 

 

(and I'd note: this goes for the Yak as well - I'm seeing some alarming things in that thread, too - it's just not as obviously egregious as 'crowdfunding' what should be a $500+ kit for less than the price of postage.)

I appreciate you doing the math for me. As I and some of the others have pointed out, this project is not intended to be profitable, and we are sinking a lot of own money into this. Just because the crowdfund is only $30 doesn't mean the full kit will retail for that much, and I can guarantee you that it wont. The reason we're crowdfunding is because thats what our customer who wanted the kit wants to do. All of our models are commissioned by our customers, either by nominating them for crowdfunding, or by paying the full development cost themselves. 

 

As for refunds, our refund/return policy on our website clearly states that we offer refunds for an unlimited amount of time. I honestly understand the healthy dose of skepticism for any business that lives on the internet, but we haven't screwed anyone over yet, to my knowledge, and don't plan on doing so any time soon. I'm an experience designer by trade, and I have been working on this concept for a very long time, trying to create an avenue for modelers like myself to have a say in the models that get produced, and its always evolving and changing and adapting. 

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On 6/21/2018 at 5:54 PM, orionfield said:

I appreciate you doing the math for me. As I and some of the others have pointed out, this project is not intended to be profitable, and we are sinking a lot of own money into this. Just because the crowdfund is only $30 doesn't mean the full kit will retail for that much, and I can guarantee you that it wont. The reason we're crowdfunding is because thats what our customer who wanted the kit wants to do. All of our models are commissioned by our customers, either by nominating them for crowdfunding, or by paying the full development cost themselves. 

 

As for refunds, our refund/return policy on our website clearly states that we offer refunds for an unlimited amount of time. I honestly understand the healthy dose of skepticism for any business that lives on the internet, but we haven't screwed anyone over yet, to my knowledge, and don't plan on doing so any time soon. I'm an experience designer by trade, and I have been working on this concept for a very long time, trying to create an avenue for modelers like myself to have a say in the models that get produced, and its always evolving and changing and adapting. 

Just ordered two kits and the counter on the page just went down for one. Not sure is "20 Unit" means no. of customers or kits in total? 

Speaking of which, I share the same concern with ICMF because I own a Form 1+ and a Ultimaker Original but decided to switch to Shapeways a few years ago for the majority of my prints due to the exact cost/accuracy issues he commented. Yes Shapeways might costs more as it appears, but considering you don't have to deal with all the post processing steps, trial & error mess that will waste you expensive RMs plus no calibration/machine cleanup steps so you can focus on just 3D designing, I'd say it is worth its price, at least to me.

However I still chose to give OOB a shot, not only because this is the subject I'm interested with and it's in the right scale, but also I want to see if OOB can actually figure out a way to lower the cost of the big object printing, for sure it will benefit our hobbies a lot, so if OOB is actually working on it I'm willing to take the risk for just $60, comparing to what I've paid already for my printers, that is nothing. 

 

And FYI I just saw a horrible example yesterday:

http://foxonemodel.fc2web.com/original/o114/original_114.html

Don't get me wrong I love this subject and the kit appears to be very brilliant but with that price tag(about $1,300/per kit + shipping!! and that's not a typo) I wouldn't even consider to purchase it at any time.

So before you decide to move forward you might really want to get an rough idea of the possible printing cost first.

 

Best wishes to your business adventures!

-Martin

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4 hours ago, md11 said:

 

 

And FYI I just saw a horrible example yesterday:

http://foxonemodel.fc2web.com/original/o114/original_114.html

Don't get me wrong I love this subject and the kit appear to be very brilliant but with that price tag(about $1,300/per kit + shipping!! and that's not a typo) I wouldn't even consider to purchase it at any time.

So before you decide to move forward you might really want to get an rough idea of the possible printing cost first.

 

Best wishes to your business adventures!

-Martin

HLJ had it for $400. Still horrible.

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