Any updates?

Please do. :)

Totally agree Marcel! Very well done, clear, and informative. Got the point across.

I think open source can be used for business if you want. As long you give them the credits. That is the beauty of OS.

Through my contact at the textile factory I was able to negotiate directly with a buckle manufacturer to produce the buckles including mold making.

@@DesignPrototypeTest Thanks!

Mold Making is very difficult. The molds must be very accurate, and you must make them from hardened steel. Similar to the stuff they typically make HSS drill bits out of. They can't make the molds and then heat treat them to hard because that would warp and distort them. Therefore, they must be made in the fully hardened state which requires some very knowledgable/experienced CAM operators working on some very expensive CNC machines. There are ways to save money, but longevity of the mold is typically reduced greatly.

The thing I'm most proud about this project is the fact that It was so unique. I even got a patent. I designed and sewed every stitch on the prototype bag. I did all of it. Nobody can ever tell me I'm not talented. I have proof of achievement. I would feel like a real loser if I had to copy other people's stuff and put my name on it instead of developing it myself. Even if I made a bunch of money doing it this way I would always know deep down that I didn't do it. Imagine how pathetic the underlings serving such a man are. The guy at the top is an unoriginal lowlife and they grovel to him. Obviously they would just be selling their souls for money in such a situation. Talk about a meaningless life. Anyway, thanks for looking at my entrepreneurial project. It's a shame how incredibly difficult it is to launch a successful business. Don't believe the hype. Your chances of being a successful entrepreneur are incredibly low . Like one in a thousand. Talent appears to have almost nothing to do with it. Survivorship bias fools the guys who won the lottery into thinking they are special when the actual explanation for their success is just dumb luck. You know what's really funny? Somebody tried to copy everything about my project. Instead of Paq One They called it the PAKT One. You know you've made something good when a group of guys spends like 6 months of their life trying to ape your accomplishment.

It does not. You thumb just slides out with the top half of the buckle.

I removed all my inventory from Amazon. When you went looking for the exact name of my product "Paq bags one" Amazon would display "Do you mean paw bags" and they would not show my bag in the list on any page. I couldn't become a brand on Amazon without a trademark and I couldn't trademark because paq is pronounced like "pack" an you can't trademark something that is "merely descriptive" So I need to change my company name if I ever want to sell on Amazon again. If you actually want a bag (because they are awesome, and one of the best projects of my life) send me an email. I still have some inventory, but I think it is unlikely I will try to relaunch this company unless something changes in the macro environment.

All complex molded designs these days will go through multiple 3D printed design iterations. This has nothing to do with the mold making process, it only proves the design as viable before making the expensive molds. So, it saves you the cost of having to make multiple molds if the part isn't right. FDM (AKA FFF) 3D printing does not help with the mold making process. There are some other additive manufacturing technologies that can directly make molds for limited production runs (10-50 parts), but that is not something available to the home gamer as of yet, and maybe not ever.

I don't have contact info for you. Sorry. My suggestion is to look up similar products on alibaba, or the alibaba equivalent of Vietnam. Then contact those companies and ask if they would be willing to produce your product. Make sure you are talking to the factory and not a middle man. Middle men tend to take your money and not pass it on to the factory.

Because I plan on making hundreds of thousands of buckles. Injection molded parts cost pennies, and pop out of the machine every 10-20 seconds. 3D printed parts cost dollars and take hours to make.

hmmm i see. good luck on your kickstarter ! nice bag

There are many ways to do prototyping with injection molding and or thermofoming. i have 27 years as a thermorforming tech. The proto molds are never made from aluminum most start from mdf then to delrin to pull sample shots. They have sample injection molds as do sample thermoformers at low cost to proto type as long as you know what company to goto. The money comes when its time to design the final mold for production.

I know! I spent 3 years trying to get this project off the ground in the U.S. at one point I was partnered up with Rickshaw who partially makes bags in S.F. The ugly truth is that when it comes to sewing of textiles for wearing on the body, the only company really making it happen in America was American Apparel, and now even that company is dying. Most if not all of these "Made in America" textile companies hire immigrants. They either bring Asian women, or folks from Mexico into the U.S. to operate the sewing machines. Then send them back home once their work visas expire. Nobody is willing to pay $350-400 for a bag, and that's what it would cost to have American workers making it here. I wish I could. I'm too small of a fish to fight against that tide. At least I went to Vietnam instead of China right?

4FunRC Man, I completely agree. I spent three years trying to get production to happen in America. I finally threw in the towel, and the day I went to Vietnam all of my problems were solved. I'm way too small of a fish to be able to fight against the tide of American job loss. In the future once my business is profitable I am hopeful that I can set up some manufacturing over here.

You say too small of a fish well if every small company your size does the same it does have impact on American jobs. This is a problem with cheap labor destroying American jobs. I with you Made in America is expensive and that needs to change but cant with cheap labor working for almost nothing.

If it was, it sure didn't work. We sold 88 bags on Kickstarter. There is really not a lot of cross-over between people who like to travel, and people who are interested in 3D printing. No, what it really comes down to is that I didn't make a video for almost a month because I was spending all my time on the bag company. So, I thought I would kill two birds with one stone. The KZfaq algorithm severely punishes you if you don't release videos with some regularity. I don't understand your indignation. You do understand that Prusa is a company with a large advertising budget, and a rabid fan base. I'm the little guy here. I have less subscribers on my KZfaq Channel than the official Prusa channel. Not to mention the fact that he pretty much controls the all the major 3D printing channels. They don't dare say a bad thing about him or risk the wrath of the horde that I received for speaking the truth. At the Bay Area Maker fair Prusa handed out flyers bragging about shipping 3000 printers per month. They aren't small. They are the dominant player in the industry now, and they control the online conversation. Try finding one bad thing said about them besides my video. Meanwhile, the man himself walks around wearing a t-shirt that says "I'm better than all you other makers" and for some reason you all subjugate yourself to his ego. I understand that you have got his back because he is a local success story for you. After all, he is making the printers in Prague which is probably like a 3 hour drive from where you live, and he is using made in Germany tech. So for you it's all in family, but over here in the U.S. 10,000 kilometers away we're not in that club. We're nothing but potential customers.

I don't know Prusa or his company, and your videos still infuriated me when I came across them today - so I don't think Prusa's status has anything to do with it. When people first felt you were very unreasonable, you responded by demanding that people listen to you more closely. Of course people were pissed! I know a lot of the anger thrown at you doesn't deserve respect, but at the same time, it's not fun seeing you get so petty and combative, especially when you do such cool work. I think you should genuinely try to understand where people are coming from, and show a more humble side of yourself. Just make things better.

I will just copy past my reply to Mike Kruger down below: I spent 3 years trying to get this project off the ground in the U.S. at one point I was partnered up with Rickshaw who partially makes bags in S.F. The ugly truth is that when it comes to sewing of textiles for wearing on the body, the only company really making it happen in America was American Apparel, and now even that company is dying. Most if not all of these "Made in America" textile companies hire immigrants. They either bring Asian women, or folks from Mexico into the U.S. to operate the sewing machines. Then send them back home once their work visas expire. Nobody is willing to pay $350-400 for a bag, and that's what it would cost to have American workers making it here. I wish I could. I'm too small of a fish to fight against that tide. At least I went to Vietnam instead of China right?