Cordless Drill Productivity Goals

An individual should be set up for on-demand production of a minimum of 30 drills per month.

The proposed format is using 3 dedicated production days - the rest being 3D printing in the background, and possibly other automated jobs that run without attendance once set up.

Each production day should yield 12 drills assembled in a period of 8 hours - assuming all parts are printed and avialable for assembly. The 8 hours does not consider printing and part manufacturing, outside of potential minor fabrication tasks. Ie - all materials must be on hand.

Set up time for engaging a production run should be 1 hour. That means a dedicated space is available, without requiring setup time.

Feasibility

In order for an 8 hour production run to yield 12 drills, the process must be optimized for a seamless build.

If 12 drills are made per day at $75 profit each - that is $900 per day. That is fair, considering time spent in printing parts.

To succeed for low startup - a 2' bed printer may be necessary to print the organizing infrastructure - cabinets, etc - for the production run.

Supply chain must be simple, robust, redundant, COTS. Rare parts must be stocked or at best substituted. The cordless drill lends itself particularly well to this.

Summary

All in all, this is a perfect case of a distributive business model - with a technology that is just the right complexity -not too hard, not too easy - to make a value proposition based on knowledge capital translated to production.