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I designed and produced a new gun, how do i market it?


swatti

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For a while now ive been designing a new shell-shotgun since there really isnt much of them around and most of them are quite expensive. This one is not and its goal is to be an entry-level gun for getting into shell-shotties. While a niche-market for sure, i think i've hit a soft spot...

BUT!

How do i market these? It feel that most of airsoft discussion is in Facebook where you get banned for selling anything close to a gun (i know nerf-modders who got permabanned) so in FB i cant market these. And in FB topics last maaaaybe and hour and then its gone.
Also tried Reddit but it kinda suffers from the same issue of topics dying out of peoples feed very quickly.
I dont know if reddit marketplace is any better longevity wise.
I tried Hopup but the app is broken. After posting the add it wont get "saved" in the system.

People dont know these exist so i need some way to point out they do. If i dont the used-pages topics just get buried under all else and people dont know how to search for these since they dont know they exist.

Seems like there is a lot of interest towards these and the "shells" are quite known and easy to get a hold of, AND people want them, there just is a very limited amount of affordable and skirmishable guns around. Latter of those i might have just fixed.

Youtube is kinda hard to get into unless you already have a large channel and i dont, i did post a video to showcase the gun.
I might be interested in sending these for testing on more popular channels but does any such channel take "guns like this" to test? I'd also want them back and i dont have that many shells on me to send them along... I doubt the testers often have any around.
And i'd need the gun back after its done, unless the tuber wants to buy one.
The mailing i can take money-wise but i cant afford sending free guns around "to try my luck"

Tips, ideas, "what would you do?"

I recently built myself a new large format 3d printer thats able to produce these reliably and about one-gun-a-day pace. Since i want to sell the guns i wont sell the file/model. Maaaybe once ive sold certain amount of these i can offer the file for sale. I would be interested in licensing the file out to a 3rd party maker (10% cut per gun for me, full support and custom models of the file) but i have no way to contact any existing makers and only ones currently printing stuff is SRU and they have their own stuff already.

If you happen to want one:
https://arniesairsoft.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/219895-wts-over-under-shotguns-3d-printed/

I also have couple more, a bit larger models in the works. I just need to ficure out how to get into the markets with these first.

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I'm no expert, but I'd say first thing to do would be cover your *albartroth* with patents to cover design and intellectual property rights and all of that. This will be cloned in China in about 3 seconds. I'd even go so far as to store the files securely on your computer.

I may be being paranoid there though.

Good luck, I've always had a soft spot for an Airsoft shotty 🙂

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Sadly enough I don't have a big YT channel and I don't really know directly anyone that has one. Maybe try Scoutthedoggie? Of all I know that'd be the one I'd trust the most.
If they work nice you could consider producing them industrially, maybe. Printing has always seemed crude to me unless really expensive machines are used.

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3 hours ago, Wingmann said:

Sadly enough I don't have a big YT channel and I don't really know directly anyone that has one. Maybe try Scoutthedoggie? Of all I know that'd be the one I'd trust the most.
If they work nice you could consider producing them industrially, maybe. Printing has always seemed crude to me unless really expensive machines are used.


Making a mold for these is ~20,000 for one half of the body. One part. ONE.
So nope.
SLS printing would make em look nice but its also too expensive.

I have a high-end machine to print them with. Quality is nice to say the least. The grey prototype is a rough sketch to test out internals. They worked, and the grey color shows the shapes and form in pictures better than black.

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39 minutes ago, swatti said:


Making a mold for these is ~20,000 for one half of the body. One part. ONE.
So nope.
SLS printing would make em look nice but its also too expensive.

I have a high-end machine to print them with. Quality is nice to say the least. The grey prototype is a rough sketch to test out internals. They worked, and the grey color shows the shapes and form in pictures better than black.

I assume you're looking at HIPS injection molding at that price? Casting in urethane resin will run you about a hundred bucks for the initial setup. Bit more if you want a vacuum degasser too.

A lot of us have had bad experiences with PLA cracking at layer lines or warping with heat, and the surface finish of FDM isn't ideal. Wingmann's sentiment isn't uncommon; I know a lot of folks who would buy SRU if it weren't for their products being all 3D printed, and personally I've sworn off buying 3D printed airsoft gear. But it's your product and your business.

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On 8/11/2021 at 5:57 PM, CatgutViolin said:

I assume you're looking at HIPS injection molding at that price? Casting in urethane resin will run you about a hundred bucks for the initial setup. Bit more if you want a vacuum degasser too.

A lot of us have had bad experiences with PLA cracking at layer lines or warping with heat, and the surface finish of FDM isn't ideal. Wingmann's sentiment isn't uncommon; I know a lot of folks who would buy SRU if it weren't for their products being all 3D printed, and personally I've sworn off buying 3D printed airsoft gear. But it's your product and your business.

No options for "urethane resin" in this country by the looks of it. Tried searching. For injection molding there are few companies that do it and couple who make the molds, at 20k+

PLA printed at high temps melts the previous layer as well as adds a new molten one. Once the parts are at 3mm or thicker they become tanks. A bodybuilder might be able to break this gun. I dont have enough strenght to break the parts without leverage. Kinda used that to define how rugged they are.

SRU and their print quality has been a debate for quite some time. They have nice machinery but how they use em is questionable.

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  • 2 weeks later...

If a large-scale resin 3d-printer is of some interest, then I have access to a Photocentric Liquid Crystal Magna at work. Build volume 510 x 280 x 350 mm, which is quite large for a resin printer. Just under 50 liters (49,9 liters). I also have a YouTube channel, although not very large at the moment.

May I suggest finding some readily available industrial tubing to make the barrels out of? That would cut down manufacturing time and use of resin immensely. I found steel and aluminium pipe with an inner diameter perfect for CAM870 shells and intend to design around for my own revolver shotgun project: https://www.instagram.com/p/CNSuYgNHU7q/

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On 8/26/2021 at 10:35 PM, SpecialWeaponsAndPlastic said:

If a large-scale resin 3d-printer is of some interest, then I have access to a Photocentric Liquid Crystal Magna at work. Build volume 510 x 280 x 350 mm, which is quite large for a resin printer. Just under 50 liters (49,9 liters). I also have a YouTube channel, although not very large at the moment.

May I suggest finding some readily available industrial tubing to make the barrels out of? That would cut down manufacturing time and use of resin immensely. I found steel and aluminium pipe with an inner diameter perfect for CAM870 shells and intend to design around for my own revolver shotgun project: https://www.instagram.com/p/CNSuYgNHU7q/

I use 22mm alu pipe as my "base" for all things barrel. Easy to find and no need to print it, the parts are bolted onto it.

If you make a video on the gun i could give you the files. If you make more of them, for money, i want a cut.

 

On 8/27/2021 at 3:19 PM, Mike_West said:

I know the original author of that. I wanted to make an airsoft version of that and asked him to join or sell the file. Lets just say he asked for "ferrari money" for it and threatened to sue me when i modeled the gun anyway and made two for myself.
Talented fella but nuts.

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  • 3 months later...
15 hours ago, paranoiddroid said:

I'd be really interested jn seeing the trigger mech on this, I really want to build an over under double at some point.

 

I was incredibly tempted by this gun but got a sweetheart deal on a hwasan about when I'd have ordered it.

 

The triggermech is about as simple as it can be. The triggers are side-by-side. It sounds odd but  its VERY confy when you use it a few times.

The triggers are just levers pushing a screw that in turn pushes the back of the shell. Buy one and behold the simplicity :D

Clearly there is a market for these as people are very interested in em, BUT its near impossible to get any publicity to these. I dont have the resources to send freebie samples to youtubers as i would have to send them shells too. Gets real expensive real fast. This one is the only topic that still has some life to it...

I have 3 models of revolver-shotguns too that i need to market somehow. Those are larger and more expensive so even less chance of putting freebies out.

EDIT: Someone ficures out a way for me to market these in way that i manage to sell ten or more and you get to pick one of models as a freebie.

EDIT2: My dissapointment to the Hwa Shan is one of the reasons i made this gun to begin with. If rubbish like that can get so widely spread then surely mine has a chance too. Just need to ficure out how.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This might be out of date info but here in the States "brainexploder" is a pretty popular channel. He also sells a lot of his own 3d printed designs (which are pretty nice in my experience. I think evike carries his stuff too). Maybe he could showcase/manufacture your blaster. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/16/2021 at 8:03 PM, swatti said:

The triggermech is about as simple as it can be. The triggers are side-by-side. It sounds odd but  its VERY confy when you use it a few times.

The triggers are just levers pushing a screw that in turn pushes the back of the shell. Buy one and behold the simplicity :D

Clearly there is a market for these as people are very interested in em, BUT its near impossible to get any publicity to these. I dont have the resources to send freebie samples to youtubers as i would have to send them shells too. Gets real expensive real fast. This one is the only topic that still has some life to it...

I have 3 models of revolver-shotguns too that i need to market somehow. Those are larger and more expensive so even less chance of putting freebies out.

EDIT: Someone ficures out a way for me to market these in way that i manage to sell ten or more and you get to pick one of models as a freebie.

EDIT2: My dissapointment to the Hwa Shan is one of the reasons i made this gun to begin with. If rubbish like that can get so widely spread then surely mine has a chance too. Just need to ficure out how.

Honestly you need to get them into the hands of a retailer and/or a YouTube reviewer.

As for the shells the octagon conversion of the street sweeper showed that shells don't matter much tbh just make it clear.

 

Registering as a business would allow you to write off the demo gun as a tax write off which would help a lot.

As for the hwasan I'm going for an APS conversion and a refinish .

 

Your other option would be to do thi gs the way the nerf lot are doing and sell kits and send them disassembled with a list of what COTS parts are needed tbh.

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