Manufacturing the hubitat - can I pick the brains of the creators?

So I’m working on an hvac related hardware product and am going through the processes of prototyping, getting injection molds created, pcbs, assembly, packaging, etc.

So the questions are two.

  1. how did you get the green graphic done on the top of the elevation? I’ve got my first run of enclosures about to be created, but can’t find anything about embedded graphics?

  2. in general, did you work with a single end to end resource to help create the product end to end, or did you piecemeal the electronics design, assembly, enclosure, packaging, ancillary things, etc.?

I don’t want you to give away trade secrets :). But your team seems much like me, just regular guys with an idea for a hardware product. Any feedback and learning I can get through your experiences is incredibly welcome! Thx.

This would be probably addressed privately?!

polycase.com have custom graphics service.

thx. that satisfied my curiosity :).

I used to work in the printing industry. This is typically done in large volumes with silkscreening and UV cured ink, but it can also be done in low volumes today with flatbed UV inkjet printers. The item is held down to the flatbed by vacuum or held still in a jig. The inkjet head and UV light assembly of the printer can be adjusted for objects several inches thick. It would take only a minute to print something the size of the hub. Setup is the longest part of the process.

If you have a low volume to produce, a common printer for this work is called an Océ Arizona and was also sold as a Fujifilm Acuity. Sign printers with this equipment can do the work for you.

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You've got several options, depending on your volume and capital flexibility. I work in industrial IoT, and we tend to use in-mold labels for such. But our volumes are tens to hundreds of thousands of units per year. In-mold labeling robots are usually six-figures due to the rigidity needed to move in and out of position quickly, but to place the label accurately every time.

For you, you'll likely want to use pad printing, silk-screening or inkjet as mentioned above. Your injection molder should have that capability, and if they don't maybe find another one.

As to outsourcing the work, if you've never done it then I'd suggest that you get a "general contractor." An end-to-end company will keep you from making a bunch of mistakes you'd miss if you were playing that role yourself. We tend to use the big guys...Flex and Jabil...but you'd need big volumes to get them interested.