Help needed sourcing/manufacturing baby gate plastic/metal fittings *quite urgent:-)*

Hi All,

We have been struggling to find a company to sell us off the shelves plastic wall fittings and metallic bits for a baby gate.
We are trying to reproduce the fittings as per the image I have attached (the parts we need are pointed by the black lines). From the conversations I had so far, plastic moulding seems to be the only way to produce it but it will require very high set up cost and large qtys, however we only want to do a small run of 500 pieces and still keep it cost effective.

If any of you have any ideas to either buy off the shelve same/similar fittings or get it produced cost efficiently in a small run and what technique should be used to produce and advantage if it, please let me know in this thread or offline. Any pointers would be very useful.

Please bear in mind this is a safety product for child so it needs to be quite strong and durable

Many Thanks in advance


S.

 

@ WADE , thanks, I have just emailed you directly.

Sam

 

Hi,

I have made a couple of videos to hopefully show you how the mechanism is working. This is a video of a similar model I have home. Sorry for the poor quality of the filming

Also I took some dimentions:

If you look at the picture above:

- Left side - top wall plastic fitting : H 7cm x W 3cm
- Left side - bottom wall plastic fitting : H 7cm x W 3cm

- Right side - top wall plastic fitting : H 8.5cm x W 3cm
- Right side - bottom wall plastic fitting : H 5.5cm x W 3cm

Hope this is helpful to get some quotes

many thanks


[video=youtube_share;pm9SeJRcTkw]http://youtu.be/pm9SeJRcTkw[/video]

 

[video=youtube_share;TaXIudkMXIQ]http://youtu.be/TaXIudkMXIQ[/video]

 

Try contacting these guys in China:

http://www.tjpa-china.org/enshop/longcheng

I have worked with Lerado in the past on baby gates, rockers, etc. They have a large group of clients that they make gates for and some of their off-the-shelf parts may be a perfect fit for what you need. If not, they still may be able to point you in the right direction.

Good luck!
Tom

 

You won't be able to find such components off the shelf anywhere. If you can't/don't want to invest in traditional plastic injection molding tooling, then your only alternative would be to do prototyping tooling in aluminum or similar. These tools still cost quite a bit, but not nearly as much as traditional tooling steel because they won't last as long.

One more option is to use rapid prototypes or machined components, perhaps a metal version would be durable enough for your application. Just watch your quantities as the costs could escalate quickly.

 

I have prototyped similar sized components using a laser sintered plastic at minimal cost. I have also had small runs of product diecast by PMS Diecasting using part tooling, much cheaper than committing to full tooling. Try [email protected], I think it was Gordon who organized my jobs.

 

If I understand the picture correctly, you should be able to make a functionally equivalent part of bent up sheet metal.