Ask HN: What can you realistically manufacture in your garage?

I've given this advice elsewhere, and I'll give it here. Go look at the small business initiatives by each branch of the U.S. military; many are now posting lists of open contracts that you can bid on for an incredible array of things.

Browse through those lists and find something you can build.

I really believe the U.S. military is in the midst of a large scale transfer of military spending from traditional large defense contractors to smaller, innovative companies. The Air Force has even opened its own venture capital arm and is actively investing in small businesses. Most, if not every, branch in the military publicly posts contracts for small businesses to bid on.

I think Anduril is a great example of the possibilities in the "new" defense space.

What's interesting is this shift is very reminiscent of military manufacturing in Japan during World War 2; much of the manufacturing was actually done by small businesses of < 30 employees in "garages" scattered around the country instead of very large factories. That was one of the reasons American bombing by Superfortresses was so ineffective at first, and one of the reasons incendiary bombs began being used.

Happy to provide more detail on this. I've been thinking about this space for awhile.

You're not the first person I've heard this from; when you say "many are now posting lists of open contracts you can bid on" where are they posting these things? https://sam.gov/content/home is what my cursory Googling found, is this what you mean, or is there some other, more relevant site involved?

Eh, I was thinking more like, "Build us a web portal for viewing the status of <random thing> and requesting more <random thing>." than, "Run guns for us cheaply."

This is what my Dad does...and he has a lathe in the garage typically producing things for helicopters and airplanes.

hmm facilitating war, even if it means defence just doesn't sit quite right with me. shame we live in a world where this is even a thing

War happens when one of two nations assumes that they are more capable of winning than another.

If you stop spending in the US and assume that Russia and China will sit idly by without invading our allies, you are living in a land of fantasy.

It's definitely a land of fantasy today, I agree but one can always hope that maybe one day instead of killing each other we'd learn to live together and work together. Imagine how much more productive we'd be. To be honest I nearly didn't post this message because it's a bit off topic and definitely divisive. I definitely support all the brave people fighting for me to be safe because I sure as hell wouldn't feel comfortable killing someone else myself to protect my "country".

Looking at human history, that will never happen. As long as there is scarcity in the world, and as long as sovereign states exist, geopolitics and thus the looming threat of war will always exist.

Not with that attitude. There's a lot of amazing things humans have accomplished that were once thought impossible. We are likely very, very early on in the anthropocene. Thousands of years from now I'm optimistic that the world will be a better place and that they'll look back on us as barbaric environment destroyers.

This makes no sense. Using this logic, why don’t more countries attack, say Costa Rica, which doesn’t even have a military?

I think the OP probably doesn’t have a problem with actual defense projects, but if you’ve been paying any attention over the last 70 years, you will know that the US has attacked many countries under the guise of “defense”.

Hi, if it's not too much to ask, could you please post some direct links for the open contracts for small businesses? I am merely curious but others might find those more useful.

On the SAM site above you can do an advanced filter for small business set aside and leave the search string empty. Not in this space so someone correct me if this is not what it means.

Former DoD contract specialist here, Sam.gov is the correct jumping off point for both information on how the process works and for where to find opportunities. The small business set aside is very important, since the regulations require that small businesses be considered to the maximum amount practicable, before larger companies can even be considered (Federal Prison Industries gets first dibs though). Veteran, woman, and minority owned businesses also get higher precedence, and those qualifiers can stack up - a minority woman veteran owned small business is golden, assuming the company can actually bid and perform properly. There are some other areas, such as HUBzone/economically disadvantaged areas that are also considered, but that's better to learn about direct from the information on Sam.gov than from a HN post.

It is a daunting task to register and follow the procedures, and you must be very attentive to detail as a small business owner; however, there are a ton of resources from the Small Business Administration to assist. Don't hesitate to contact them. Be persistent, patient, and proactive.

It used to be much harder than it is today, which is why it might seem to most people that federal contracting is a corrupt good ol' boy network; newcomers simply didn't follow the instructions right, due to complexity and/or confusion. Today though, it's a perfect time to get in the door.

Note that the "minority veteran woman" thing can be gamed a bit (and is) - I know of a few small businesses that are officially owned by the spouse of the actual leader so that they can qualify higher.

So even if your spouse doesn't check all three boxes, having the company officially be owned by your wife can help.

Yep that's almost standard practice by now, so there's lots of competition in that space. And most of the time you (the person researching/drafting/approving the contract) can't really verify it. For me I didn't mind, since it's on them if they committed fraud, not me. Plenty times I would ask to speak to the owner and find out it was "co-owned" with the wife's name on the business license to get woman-owned, and the husband's name (or wife's name, in many cases) to get veteran-owned. Hey, fine with me. Mostly all I wanted was that the work was to spec and delivered on time. If you can game the system without sacrificing legality or quality, go for it!

While most local governments will post a Request for Quote list, and this often includes IT related services. I disagree this is the good choice for a first business project, as missing a deadline can incur egregious fines.

Local specialized custom hr/tax/legal/retail/city software is always popular, as it is region specific and constantly changing. ;)

What type of issues are involved when you don’t deliver to the government on time?

Somewhere between late fees to congressional hearings depending on how badly things go.

Other poster summed it up nicely, as there's a range of remedies from fees to lowering the payment you get to investigation to prison, but by far the most significant impact is this key metric:

Past Performance.

You can probably get away with screwing over the government once, maybe even twice. But good luck once you're legally and nationally blacklisted.

I used to be the education director at a makerspace and now run a 3D printing company selling small plastic parts and teaching entrepreneurs how to start small manufacturing businesses at home.

Few thoughts:

- Focus on your hobbies and other industries you know well. What problems exist? Where can you make things better? Are there problems people mention over and over again?

- CAD modeling is often THE fundamental skill needed for people to bring their ideas to market. You can make CAD models that look almost real using software you can get for free. This allows you to work backwards, first determining if there's a market, and also working out many of the design flaws before making something

If you're just excited to make stuff, and want to get your hands on something, you can do all kinds of things in a tight space.

- 3D printers are small and provide many automated opportunities - Laser cutters are dead simple to set up and use to make real products and are easy to automate. - CNC machines can be had for under 5k and are super powerful - Portable MIG welders have a small footprint and welding tends to be in high demand - Leather working tends to be high perceived value though automation is limited - Soldering and electronics repair requires little space but again, automation is limited

I've got loads of other ideas too but I'm guessing that's good for now. My contact information is in my profile if you'd like to talk more.

I started making jet ski tread mats out of astro turf in my garage last year. Dead simple to cut, margin is super high ($60 for a standard set of three on ~$8 worth of material), and time spent per unit from roll to package is something like 15-20 minutes. It was fun and made about $30k over the summer months but I stopped when I moved back to the west coast.

I could have handled the whole operation in a spare bedroom if I didn't have a garage, and there are plenty of areas where I could have dropped the time required or the cost. I never bought the turf in bulk and I used household scissors to cut from a template so buying a roll and cutting with something more effective may have netted me more. Niche leisure products in spend-y verticals typically do well.

Out of curiosity, how did you determine which skis you'd make mats for? Did you have to generate your own templates? Also, where did you sell?

My buddy did something similar.

He lived near a town where a mine had shut down a few years earlier. Him and his buddy went out and found a ton of heavy duty, industrial conveyor belts. They took as much as their two trucks could haul. Went back and cut them into lengths suitable for truck beds. Sold them at $100 a pop for any truck. Same thing. They'd just told the customer to measure their bed and they'd cut them to fit.

Not sure how much they made, but the rubber was like an inch thick, heavy enough to stay in place without any glue or tie downs and the rubber was really grippy on the one side. It was prefect for what they did with it. You could put a tool box smack in the middle of the bed it wouldn't move an inch on that rubber.

I've always wondered if you could do something similar with wholesale conveyor mats these days or if this was just a "right place, right time" kind of a deal for my friend.

"Found" a ton of heavy duty, industrial conveyor belts.

On my way to the rust belt with a hackszall right now.

I used to work for a manufacturing company that started out as a married couple making Christmas ornaments with a $2000 laser cutter/engraver.

Screen printing is a pretty easy business to do out of a garage - you can either print and sell your own designs or print for others. Unless there are already a lot of screen printers in your area odds are there are businesses and organizations that would love to make some cheap swag with their logos. I haven't checked but I have to imagine there's a "xometry for screen printing" service out there that you could probably get semi-consistent work from.

Honestly though, so long as you don't need to quit your day job today, you can probably find some good deals on some used cnc equipment that will let you make anything while staying in your current price range. The difficulty is not in determining what's possible but rather what's profitable. Most garage manufacturing companies tend to make some incredibly niche thing like a bracket that allows you to stick a camera on a particular item used for a particular hobby; stuff that anyone could make but no big companies care enough to develop. Most of the time these are tinkerers who make lots of little widgets to solve their own problems and one of them eventually takes off.

If your goal is just to make money, I would suggest selling products that can be made by some service like xometry until you stumble across something that's popular, then you can bring manufacturing in house to increase your margins.

> The difficulty is not in determining what's possible but rather what's profitable.

If you troll Etsy or eBay or places like that, you'll quickly begin to realize the quantity of things that are obviously made on a CNC milling machine, or a laser cutter, etc.

The customizability can be the selling point - and if you can fit everything on a trailer, you can even haul it to state fairs, town fun fests, etc.

Think those fancy wood name plates you can buy at Disneyland kind of thing. But the big advantage can be you are local instead of some online thing.

The legality should interest you. I saw someone have their small business shut down by police because they were running it out of their basement. It wasn't the noise or pollution (which realistically are the nuisances you're going to be inflicting on neighbors) but the excess cars parked and delivery trucks coming and going down the street. One neighbor ratted them out.

The problem with the space isn't really the capital but noise abatement, waste disposal, and inventory. The ideal product would be quiet to make, not use tough chemicals to dispose, and materials you can buy in bulk and small enough not to take up a ton of space in the worksite.

The way I read it OP isn't saying they are going to ignore legal issues, but that they are looking for ideas and don't want to get into the weeds of legal issues for the moment.

I assume they intend to narrow down ideas based on their specific situation.

I'm curious, what legal issues are we talking about here? What is not legal about running a business out of one's basement, and what law were they "ratted out" for breaking?

Not who you're replying to, but I would imagine its an issue of registry and/or zoning depending on the type of business (and maybe tax stuff too). I'm from Australia so probably pretty different laws, but here at least you have to register the businesses address of operations and a part of that process is identifying your 'primary operation or activity', ie what the business does, some operations will be excluded from being conducted in residentially zoned areas regardless (large scale manufacturing, waste disposal & recycling, etc) but most trades will be permitted, I know a number of car mechanics that operate largely from home.

Most local governments have zoning restrictions that dictate what kind of structures can be built and limit what activities can be done in an area. Typically there are certain activities permitted as a right, some that require special approval, and others that are just flat out banned. The single family dteched housing zones where most garages are located tend to be the most restrictive zones with regards to commercial activity. Typically if you violate a zoning law you'll get some standard number of days to comply or you'll get hit with a large fine.

You need a "Home Occupation Permit". The details will vary by municipality, but here are the requirements for Sacramento CA, just to pick a random example: https://www.cityofsacramento.org/-/media/Corporate/Files/EDD...

"The following occupations are eligible for a Home Occupation Permit subject to restrictions discussed in the next section. If the occupation is followed by an asterisk, the use is also subject to special conditions also discussed below. Eligible home occupations are:

1. General office uses, such as accountant, administrative assistant, answering service, appraiser, architect, attorney, bookkeeper, broker or agent (real estate, insurance, etc.), counselor, consultant, drafting service, engineer, interior decorator, secretarial service, word processing service, and other office uses whose characteristics are substantially similar to those listed.

2. Commission merchant, direct sale product distribution, internet, or mail order business.

3. Dressmaker, tailor, fashion designer.

4. Mobile vehicle glass installation and mobile vehicle detailing.*

5. Pet services, such as pet sitting, pet grooming, pet training, and veterinarian care.*

6. Office for contractor, handyperson, janitorial service, landscape contractor, gardening service.*

7. Artist.

8. Tutoring.*

9. Small equipment, appliance, and computer assembly, repair, or reconstruction.*

10. Healing arts professional, including physician, surgeon, chiropractor, physical therapist, acupuncturist, and somatic practitioner.*

11. Hair stylist, barber, and manicurist.

12. Swimming instructor.*

13. Cottage food operation as defined in section 113758 of the California Health and Safety Code."

=================

I saw somebody get dinged for this once for running a Twitch stream out of their garage and accepting donations, one of the only times I've seen the modern "contractor" trend work out in anyone's favor:

- https://nitter.net/happyf333tz/status/1036846647945261056

- https://nitter.net/happyf333tz/status/1040074413599678465

compressed gas storage, flammables, chemical storage, hot work, etc are often governed by local law over and above needing a property zoned for light industry.

In reviewing neighborhood covenants whilst searching for a new home, I was surprised to see some of them make explicit the fact that running a business in your home is allowed, provided that it doesn't generate significant traffic/parking.

Gotta have a carve-out for the folks participating in an MLM scheme out of their house. They're quite popular.

Of course it also benefits remote tech workers who have an LLC or whatever. And handymen, et c.

This is almost always exactly what it's for, and those with ears to hear can use it to their advantage.

The key is to fly under the radar and not cause problems.

I suspect that is because home based businesses are explicitly protected in many localities in the US. AKA, the HOA couldn't actually tell you that you couldn't do it if they wanted to.

I actually got something along these lines into my deed--which was for a software business before that was pretty normal and not the sort of thing even worth mentioning.

This is indeed the case in my HOA as well and I was (pleasantly) surprised to see it codified as such.

>The legality should interest you. I saw someone have their small business shut down by police because they were running it out of their basement. It wasn't the noise or pollution (which realistically are the nuisances you're going to be inflicting on neighbors) but the excess cars parked and delivery trucks coming and going down the street. One neighbor ratted them out.

Nobody is checking what's going on in garages and basements in Detroit and the police in that kind of place would laugh off a call like that. Not having snooty busybody neighbors (an impossibility in most of the "nice neighborhoods" and "good school districts" that HNers generally buy into) seems to matter more than legality in practice. Nobody else cares if you're legal as long as you're reasonable.

My next house is going to be so far from my neighbors that if they were complaining about noise from my basement they would be admitting to trespassing.

An awful lot of stuff. I wouldn't even know where to begin, especially if you're willing to consider a hybrid model where some parts / sub-assemblies are manufactured elsewhere and delivered to you (for example, having PCB's produced by OSHpark or PCBway, etc.) and you do final assembly in the garage.

If it were me, I'd also be looking at scenarios that involve any kind of "thing" that I could acquire cheaply and re-purpose somehow. Making lamps out of old wine bottles, that sort of thing.

Robots, unmanned vehicles of various sorts, all sorts of small electronic gadgets, probably some auto accessories... really, the range of things you could (at least hypothetically) manufacture in a space that size is huge.

Now whether or not you could manufacture the thing at scale may be a different question. You could probably easily accommodate doing something the size of a small home appliance (think: washing machine size) if you only had to do one at a time. But doing that at scale might well require more space. So is the intent to stay in the garage and run an enduring business there, or just to ship a prototype, prove the model, and then maybe expand? Or is this purely an academic thought experiment?

I’m doing something very much like what you describe. Small footprint IoT device, we get the custom designed PCB’s shipped in and most of our BoM is generic off the shelf stuff that is already available on Alibaba/AliExpress. Our enclosure and other plastics are designed in house and injection molded in my two car garage with molds printed on a resin printer. Soldering is custom ordered overseas where possible and hand soldered when not.

The Buster Beagle was a real game changer in this space, though if your parts are really small there are other even cheaper options.

The goal is to, as you say, prove the prototype and then get a larger dedicated space. The product I have is not super niche and could theoretically grow a lot, but we are planning to be pretty adaptable by focusing a lot on COTS components, the kind that you can go onto Alibaba and find 5 factories for whatever you need.

I currently manufacturer a fairly niche product with nothing but a 7 year old $250 3d printer, some off the shelf parts, and a bit of custom electronics. Very high profit margin, as I am the only producer of this item (!).

I'd love to move to a more "robust" process, but options for materials and widespread access to 3d printing provides a lot of versatility for a single-person business where I want to control the entire product and process end-to-end.

Just need to find your niche.

This is basically how Lulzbot started: 3d printing parts for 3d printers. I know at one point they were experimenting with making molds and pouring parts, I think out of resin. But when I toured their new facility a few years later, they had a giant farm of 3D printers, so I gather that didn't work out.

I have since gotten into 3d printing and have printed molds and poured silicone with good luck. Some of that silicone has been the final part, some were then used as molds for pouring resin in. I've even added glass fiber to some of that resin before pouring to make some pretty sturdy parts.

Maybe some of the parts you are 3d printing now could be done with resin? Bondo makes a product with glass fiber in it, but most of the parts I'm doing are fairly small, and the bondo has long fibers in it, when I make my own fibers, I just cut fiberglass and can make it whatever length fiber I want.

How does making your own product on a home 3D printer compare to the cost per unit of having something like Shapeways or similar do it? Out of curiosity, I took my design for a Dremel gig that is about 4 - 5 hours of total printing time (biggest part is 3 hours, and several 1/2 hour pieces), and a single unit cost from an online quote was roughly $35. Plus there is a good selection of materials, including metal options (much more expensive though), but biggest advantage would be consistency of builds (I still find 3D printing at home to be finicky at best).

The material costs for 3D printing are really small. A 1kg spool of PLA is in the order of 20-30 USD, and most 3D prints have only a small amount of infill, so they're surprisingly light for their volume.

For example, I designed a set of sprockets to drive my blinds, and the total weight of the sprockets to drive 3 sets of blinds is less than 15 grams of plastic. This goose-shaped figurine is about 35g of plastic: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3906053

For my application, it's much cheaper and I have the added flexibility of being able to adjust my design and rapdily prototype should the other components need to change due to unavailability -- I have already had to do this.

For something that costs me $0.17 at home, Etsy people want to charge upwards of $4 plus shipping and Shapeways or the like are $20+.

How did you come to have the skills to design and build whatever it is you manufacture? I'm guessing you have a mix of mechanical and electrical background.

I always have ideas for little products (some involve electronics others not) I'd like to build, but how to go from raw idea in my head to working assembly, I'm lost on: choosing motors, control board, mechanical reliability, etc. Maybe I just need to read some ME books, but if they are like math and physics texts, there is gulf between the text how to do build something practical.

If it's custom Guitar Hero guitars I'd like to get in touch to buy one. If not, I hope someone reading this does.

I've thought of making various custom (and ruggedized) game peripherals. The electronics and switches I could do (assuming the ICs are available), but designing housings to be 3d printed might be tricky.

For a guitar, however... possibly having the body made of wood like a real electric guitar could be a selling point.

There are plenty of guides for 3d printed guitars specifically, and from the perspective of someone who's never 3d printed anything they don't seem too complex. Not sure about other controllers though.

I've always thought the way to go is take a normal controller say, and tear out the internal electronics, replace the switches if needed with stronger/better ones, and put it in a custom 3D printed housing.

How did you discover the market for this product? Are you part of some interest-based-community whose members want/need this part?

I would like to hear any advice you/others have about finding a product in your niche to manufacture!

usually you find a market by scratching your own itch.

helps if you have breadth of knowledge and experience in a variety of fields also. interdisciplinary solutions still have plenty of untapped market potential

other than that there is no magic formula that i know of. its kind of one of those "if you have to ask..." type things.

To expand on this, make sure you itch like people with lots of money but no time/knowhow.

For example, hand out at small-town airports or boat harbors, or with lawyers and doctors. If you can find some small part that would help them use their boat, then $300-500 for it might not even be an extreme price especially if they see you using it first.

(This is not an argument to go buy a boat and plane).

You're thinking of this in reverse. First find something you want to manufacture, then figure out how to build it in your garage.

Don't be the solution searching for a problem!

》First find something you want to manufacture

I'd add that it's something that you want to manufacture for which there are buyers, otherwise the inventory won't go anywhere and they'll waste their investment.

Isn't a job a solution to the problem of needing money?

You take stock of your skills, hit the job boards, ...

Came here to say something similar.

First, the ask is to help find things that can make money in the garage. I think that would be like finding ‘problems’ then applying a ‘location:garage’ filter to narrow the choices down.

Then, after choosing the product, it’s to tool the garage to manufacture the ‘solution’

New framing:

the problem is "convince partner that I need a sweet shop in the garage", solution is "become entrepreneur requiring sweet shop in garage" ;)

Prototyping can be done easily. CNC or 3D Printing? Protolabs. PCBs? Oshpark. Get a prototype made first, it is going to be a little expensive, but less than investing in a bunch of manufacturing equipment.

Small batch soaps, candles, "bath oils" and such can be done with minimal capital and little regulatory oversight.

Print shop type things, especially specialized like vinyl cutting and large banners, could be a good business depending on where you're at. Might be able to buy used or lease equipment too.

Woodworking / furniture shop and / or antique furniture restoration might not be terribly capital intensive.

Seeds, saplings, etc. Small houseplants and barely sprouted houseplants sell for a lot on Etsy and other sites and require very moderate amounts space and money. The difficulty is skill. Plants can be hard to grow and it’s easy to make a mistake that ruins lots of your crop!

I had an acquaintance who made a very handsome living cultivating apple tree starts. I don't know how much exactly but he lived very well.

Plus 1 on this! I use my back yard in this way, but plan to set up some indoor areas also. So far I have not been trying to sell things, just playing and seeing what works best. There are some plants that are very easy to propogate that people enjoy such as rosemary.

Or, you know, marijuana.

> ...not particularly interested in the legality of this...

A couple years ago I became quite interested in building my own grow lights for starting garden veggie seedlings. The YouTube recommendations surrounding such videos were quite interesting... It turns out another plant needs high power as well.

Selling cannbis clones and support etc could be very lucrative.

And potentially legal, depending on locale.

I would suggest looking at the mechanical puzzle community.

A quick look around https://puzzleparadise.net/ will reveal many people willing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for bespoke homemade sequential discovery puzzles made with laser cutting, woodworking, 3D printing, CNC, mill, lathe, custom PCBs, etc.

To go further down the rabbit hole see: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1j5V0nECn9hqUCmPmxPqi...

I stumbled on this place, https://puzzledabq.com/, in Albuquerque earlier this year.

Probably one of the busiest establishments in the area from what I could tell.

So the retail side is probably pretty solid right now too.

This is so cool and a niche I never knew existed, thanks for posting.

A friend and I manufacture a laser party light that makes your feet glow in a space smaller than most garages.

Just a 3d printer, some custom cut metal pieces, the actual electronic components and some soldering irons. [0]

[0] https://toeglo.com

Many small scale manufacturing suppliers operate on that scale - or at least could, with sufficient organization. And maybe fudging a bit and using the driveway as a loading dock to store materials and outgoing products.

Lathe, CNC Mill, Drill Press, Bandsaw, Bend Brake, CNC laser/plasma cutter. That'd be the basics of a fully featured metal shop. Buying used and upgrading as you bring in some revenue would keep you under your price target.

Sam Zeloof alone managed to manufacture chips with the early 1970s technology in his garage using old fab equipment bought cheap (sadly don't remember the exact budget): http://sam.zeloof.xyz/

Maybe with more people and more capital this could be scaled to something that can be sold, like replicas of classic CPUs.

That was my first thought upon reading the title, but you have ton ponder it, though. Does it fit the "reallistically" criteria? I mean, sure it's been done already so it is possible, but this is advanced work and probably not really accessible to the average hacker.

That size and capital outlay could be the basis for a very nice custom furniture/woodworking shop; but the skills necessary would require some work to gain.

Someone is basically doing that for keyboards, though they mainly rebox/ship from China.

An apartment.

Might or might not be legal. The disadvantage is you can only make one, but the advantage is recurring revenue once you've made it.

Have you ever seen a MagLite flashlight? (Or a clone)? The batteries are kept in place by a threaded cap which is spring loaded. My neighbor manufactures the caps, alone, in his garage. Cuts the threads and installs the spring. As far as noise I do hear his air compressor occasionally. You can buy quiet air compressors but they are orders more expensive than a standard unit.

One of my favorite ideas was told to me by my uncle who works in the die cast industry. He met a guy who made lug nuts for Semi tractor tires in his garage. One item, and he made a living off of it. I have always thought that this idea was the perfect example of how to get started in an industry. If you were ambitious you could start adding more spare parts one at a time.

To expand on this, there are entire "fan clubs" around old military trucks - for example https://www.steelsoldiers.com - so you could infiltrate said groups and find what parts are starting to become rare/hard to find NOS anymore (new old/original stock) and start making replacements.

I think super-niche small-run hobby/lifestyle/specialty products are the big answer if you want to monetize your skills and experience.

I'm really into analog photography and I can think of several products that people (including myself) would pay for but that it's just not economically feasible for a big company to hire a bunch of people and pay them wages, health insurance, and 401ks to make, on top of the actual cost of the product. I'm looking to gradually put together a workshop to try and make some of them, and if I do them, I might as well sell them. Even if it's $100 out the door for a $5 piece of metal, there's actually a market for that in terms of hobby income, it's just not a market that will sustain full-time employees and mass production.

Between 3d printing, stamping, a CNC mill and lathe, casting, a laser cutter, and a vacuum oven, you can really do a tremendous amount of stuff in your garage, especially if you are willing to leverage these tools together. 3D print a part and then cast it in a durable metal, machine it to clean it up. CNC mill yourself a stamping die. Use the vacuum oven to cure things, or dehydrate your filament, etc. Like on paper that's pretty much a tool-and-die shop, given sufficient effort you can make things that will let you make whatever else you want - much like chemistry you're never more than a couple tools away from the thing you want, you just have to make the thing that will let you make the thing you want.

Optical lithography is not that hard either as long as you're not working at semiconductor scale. There's that kid that is making chips in his garage over in the UK or something. But you can use that as a manufacturing technique for other stuff. Or use resist etching like for PCBs.

In a lot of cases, really the only limit is when you bump into something that's restricted or too hazardous to keep around even if it's unrestricted. Like boy, mercury intensifier works great but... I like my neural system the way it is. Even selenium intensifier or pyrocat developer are pretty yikes in terms of the MSDS, very much a "better have a fume hood" thing, or do it outside (in a daylight tank).

Incidentally, but, my most insane "I'd love to do that in my garage" is custom lenses. I know the accuracy is probably just not there compared to what you'd realistically need for good results, but it really seems like single-point diamond turning should be something that is achievable with a high-end setup (say $25k) in this era of solid CNC mill or lathe setups for half that price. Maybe it's something you could build out of a CNC setup but again, is it accurate enough to make it worth it (not sure of the tolerances required, at least 1/1000th, probably 1/10,000 is better, 1/100k or finer should do it, which I guess isn't too far out of what you can do with a lathe, it's all just end work and you have to be precisely optically centered and aligned). Coating is one where you'd need the vacuum oven for sure, assuming it wasn't too toxic (iirc coatings are fluoride based). Growing optics-grade fluorite or calcite crystals also might be possible for lens blanks (although again, maybe too nasty) - or glass casting too. You'd need an optical bench too of course.

There is definitely a market for that I think - all-fluorite lenses are excellent for wide-spectrum photography (UV to IR in the same lens without focus shift - see the Coastal Optics lenses f.ex) and people (companies) pay big bucks for those, like $50k is entry-level for something in that class if you go out and buy it new. And with single-point you can make aspheric lenses as easily as spheric, so you could do all-aspheric designs that aren't commercially viable for mass-market lenses... as well as super-high-quality repros of classic lenses that are obscure or just classics. People would pay for a neo-retro Hypergon or modern takes on sonnar/heliar/etc if you could produce good results. Or you could make tools that let you do it in the traditional fashion with spheric surfaces.

http://www.savazzi.net/photography/coastalopt_60.html

https://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/nikon/nikkor...

http://www.company7.com/nikon/lens/0105f4.5uv.html

https://jmcscientificconsulting.com/testing/asahi-pentax-ult...

Anyway though another place where some of this ends is "too difficult to make at home"... that's actually a more interesting question in some ways, a dedicated hobbyist with tool-and-diemaker level machinist skills fluency with modern CNC and 3D printing and the techniques enabled by that, and enough knowledge of chemistry/optical/electrical/RF to get yourself in trouble, can of course make an enormous amount of stuff. But things like single-crystal turbine blades for micro-turbine designs are difficult and without the "real deal" you are leaving performance on the table. In some cases (again, things that are too toxic to handle, or illegal) you do basically hit a wall, not all projects scale down to the hobbyist level.

Similarly - I was recently looking for a replacement pivot for my mountain bike, and found a machine shop in Whistler, BC (arguably the current Mecca of mountain biking) that specializes in making upgrades for parts that regularly fail in current models, as well as specialized accessories.

https://pinnermachineshop.com/

How would a person with the ability/equipment to do this work at home get matched up with a company that wants to buy such things?

This seems like the sort of work that was spun off from some kind of existing business relationship.

Yes, that's the hard part. Often times harder than the mfg work. I believe he took over the contract from an acquaintance.

Yeah this seems so strange a thing to do. Maybe they're personalized/ruggedized in some nice way?

Dude, yeah, fixed wing VTOL drones airframes/kits.

The margins are really high.

A machine shop with a lathe and a mill, especially CNC, can manufacture just about anything.

I personally refurbish electronics. It's nice and quiet.

With a really good graphic/packaging designer you could make small batch, die cut and laser cut packaging. Stores flat, materials are cheap. Bring some fancy samples to farmers markets and craft fairs, pitch people who want prototype or short run packaging on Kickstarter, etc.

You'll never outcompete a large market, but for people making < 1000 of a thing, there's not a lot of options.

That was the stated goal of Defense Distributed, to allow manufacture of firearms in your garage. Dunno what happened to them after one of the founders got arrested for personal legal problems. Thought it was an interesting concept, though.

> I am not particularly interested in the legality of this at the moment. But safety considerations could be important.

Very illegal: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/gadget/ar-15-full-auto-sear-...

I guess at that scale your not looking to beat anyone on price. Your going for bespoke quality, I'd say. So you want something that people pay a lot for already so you can charge more and put the word "bespoke" in front of it.

One idea I had was bicycle frames, if you know arc welding. Custom size frames or of unique design go for a lot. I guess it depends on how fiddly they get, but if you can bang out the standard fittings then the main part should be quite quick to put togther.

With some woodworking equipment you could make loudspeaker enclosures. Add a CNC machine and you’ll be making enclosures just as good as the big brands.

I will add that there are a lot of excellent publicly-available DIY loudspeaker designs out there. Many of which do not have readily available flat pack DIY kits.

There might be an opportunity there.

The kits are frequently sold out, so I assume the demand is decent. It could be that margins aren't great so producers aren't eager to keep stocks high, but I've never looked into it. I just know that when I want them, they're sold out.

Made in USA safety razor.

There have been a few pop up, seemingly sell really well, then disappear for unknown reasons. I think Weber was the last one, and they became highly sought after.

Charge 150 bucks a pop, people will buy it.

Here's a tour of the late Grant Imahara's workshop. He worked on robotics and, I believe, props in there?

He's got a pretty significant amount of capability -- "CNC mills, laser cutters, lathes, paints, electronics, work tables, and, of course, multiple 3D printers" -- built into a space that looks closer to a 1-car garage than a 2-car garage.

edit: here's the actual link https://youtu.be/hsCSTO8SaQU

Oh my gosh, thanks, can't believe I forgot it.

I think that's more 4 car garage than 2 or 1 car. It also has quite a tall ceiling and industrial power and ventilation hookups.

I have a workshop/gym in my 2-car garage and his space doesn't look much bigger than mine. (It is, however, infinitely cooler than mine)

He's got the tall ceiling, yeah, but he wasn't using it in any way that I can see.

Power hookups likely wouldn't be an obstacle if one was recreating this in a residential garage. Would just need 220V for some of the machines I bet. Key here is that for Grant's line he surely you running all of the power-hungry machines at once as he was (to the best of my knowledge) working on bespoke one-off projects.

In the video, they call out that it's "about 5 or 6 hundred square feet". An average 2 car garage is ~360 square feet, so it'd definitely closer to a 3-4 car garage.

Almost anything smaller than a breadbox. I’m not trying to be flippant, but those are better starting conditions than I had for the moderately profitable craft kit or outdoor product manufacturing businesses I’ve run. Inventory is more likely to constrain your space than equipment, and power supply is more likely to constrain your equipment than budget.

Lionheart Kombucha in Portland Oregon started in a garage, and now is made out of his basement! He has a 3000gal fermenter down there that gets inspected. He used to give lessons at his house on how to make your own.

Get a commercial dehydrator. You can make dehydrated fruit and veg, trail food, jerky, dried herbs, tea and lots of other things.

You can grow gourmet or medicinal mushrooms with a handmade flow hood, a pressure cooker and two grow tents.

I'd do a lot of research in the market before starting a food business at home. Rules and regulations are pretty intense and if you're selling stuff for people to consume it usually has to be prepared in an approved and inspected kitchen, which is very difficult for home chefs. It's not impossible but prepare for a _ton_ of roadblocks. Most folks end up renting time in commercial kitchens that take care of crossing all the t's and dotting the i's so they are properly inspected and certified for commercial food prep, but you'll pay a premium for their service.

And the next major hurdle is actually selling product to stores. Good luck getting into real grocery stores, if you don't have a relationship with them or some kind of major in they won't even give you the time of day. You'd have to start small and super local, like an indie grocer that is willing to take a chance (and almost certainly have you take on 100%+ of the risk and pay to take back any unsold product).

I've listened to some folks on cooking podcasts that tried successfully (and unsuccessfully) to get into selling their own sauces, condiments, etc. and it is a hell of a difficult journey. They all spent easily six figures of their own cash to get it all bootstrapped and off the ground too. I don't think a single one ended up being happy in the end or felt like it was worth the trouble.

We've spent about $50k getting going, but we are on a farm so have options others don't. Our equipment was $10k, the rest went into refrigerated containers we turned into a kitchen grade dehydration space, prep room, coolroom and storage.

I'm fortunate to have a sister in the food retailing business who was our first customer. We started dehydrating lime slices to use up the excess limes from our yard and control fruit fly, and found we couldn't keep up with demand. From there it's gone really well.

We are in Australia though, YMMV.

If you want to create an economically viable business, focus first on how you're going to profitably locate, attract and sell to a growing pool of new customers. The vast majority of businesses which fail, do so due to a lack of Customers not a lack of Product.

I know of at least a few businesses that got off the ground in a garage with a little 3-axis CNC mill and a few ideas. Find an area thats underserved and come up with a better idea.

My old neighbor makes custom collars for pets (and for certain group people as well). He lost his shoe repair business a few years back, but using his skills, he’s doing pretty well.

His collars aren’t just leather bells. He adds engraving, GPS, jewels and vegan options. it’s crazy how much people are willing to spend on their pets.

I saw a pontoon houseboat built in a 2-car garage by a shop teacher. Assembled outside of course. People even live in these puppies.

Can beat a lake-cabin, especially for people who live near lots of connected lakes.

>not particularly interested in the legality

Counterfeit board games.

Board game mechanics aren't copyrightable anyway. You can make this fully legal if you don't infringe copyright on any of the artwork.

well, you can manufacture a gun [0] from materials procured from your hardware store. Of course that would likely be illegal in many juridictions first to manufacture, then to sell.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Luty#Firearms_design

Manufacturing tends to be legal in most states as long as it's not an NFA item. Selling requires the appropriate FFL license and often times a fairly high class, requiring a business address.

There are a few makers who operate as small "satellite" FFLs but typically it's more profitable to just be a reseller or do transfers for $30 a pop.

Making and selling accessories though is very doable and can probably make solid money. Lots of random little connectors or mounts that you can charge an arm and a leg for.

Hot sauce or other condiments or pastries.

Tech augmentations where you add features to a product, tear down, solder up, assemble back and QA.

I convert old photo negative enlargers to UV enlargers for printing with alternative processes (cyanotype in particular).

It doesn't take much space and I do it out of my small European town house basement. Which also serves as my photo lab for demonstrations.

That's neat. What do you use as the source? A bank of UV LEDs?

Never really thought about that but can you get larger "flashlight" style UV-spectrum LEDs from cree/etc? Of course you need to diffuse it and fewer larger elements are harder than more smaller elements but the output power is probably higher with the big LEDs, and I seem to remember some of the alt-processes are quite insensitive (like, leave it outside in the sun for a half hour).

The other way you can do it is, of course, printing a big negative and contact printing outside. It's a little lame with film since you have to go through an interpositive to get back to a negative (unless you use positive B+W slide process or similar - but those processes aren't great either in terms of quality), but ironically those processes are now extremely accessible through digital or hybrid-digital workflows. Scan your negative, print the scan (still negative) onto a transparency, and contact print, done. Or you can take a random digital image and invert it and then print it onto a transparency.

I should give laser-transparency cyanotype a go one of these days, that would be a few fun afternoons.

On the "how do I put out enough UV light for cyanotype enlargment" thing, I wonder if there's a way to get flashbulbs to put out UV light. One of the reasons older flash photos don't have the modern digital "flash" look is because the whole flashbulb lights up, and then the reflector actually spreads out the light from the flashbulb, so you don't have a point source like the xenon tube, it's a highly diffused source. And it's actually relatively intense by modern standards - another weird niche where flashbulb still is viable is infrared photography, IR flashbulbs put out a pretty massive amount of light.

One of my friends does 3D printed and resin casted cosplay armor/props out of his garage. Low volume, high margins.

T-shirt printing, leather craft, 3d printing long-tail plastic parts for things where spare parts are no longer available, small-scale electronics manufacturing, hydroponic production of fresh ingredients for local restaurants, embroidery, concrete countertop/sink production, glass work for smoking, classic car restoration, kit car production, hobby steam engine production, tiny wood shop, CNC production for sale on Etsy, jewelry crafting. Those are ones I can think of off the top of my head.

I have a dream of producing custom recumbents. I don't know where to get thin-walled pipes, but a start capital is roughly as you have described.

Local metals dealer?

But at this point carbon fiber is pretty easy to manufacture. For a bike frame the hard part would be design optimization and stress calculations. It might even be easier once you have the molds. I'm not really sure I understand why some upstart carbon bike company hasn't cleaned up given how inexpensively some of the no-name carbon parts from china are (and how they appear to be at least as good if not better than some of the name brand stuff in some cases).

Are you going to make the old-timey recombants with the steering below the seat, unlike the modern ones with the huge handlebars? I miss those. Like this one:

https://www.cyclingabout.com/heaviest-touring-bike-ever-behe...

(I met this guy in Cambridge Mass in the 80's).

McMaster-Carr supplies thin-wall chromoly tube [0] suitable for fabricating bicycle frames.

[0] tube is measured by the outer diameter; pipe is measured by the inner diameter

McMaster-Carr won’t sell to small companies, my friends and I have tried several times, only to have orders cancelled for the above-mentioned reason. It’s a shame because their website has a wealth of information (CAD drawings, measurements, etc.), one of the best I’ve seen.

What exactly have you tried to order? I've been ordering from McMaster both to a fairly small business and my personal home address with absolutely no issues for over 8 years.

Are you in the US? If you're trying to buy those tubes, are you trying to order very long lengths? UPS apparently has a limit of 108" total length, and a sum of 165" for length + "girth".

As for McMaster overall - I agree with some other sentiments here that they're great, though I do admit the "McMaster tax" (paying 10~200% what you could find the identical part somewhere else for) can be annoying at times, but is worth it when you want a reliable supplier with almost universally good quality products.

edit: Based on your reply to a sibling comment, I looked around, and found this thread that seems to reinforce your experience that McMaster shipping to Canada is...unreliable: https://www.chiefdelphi.com/t/mcmaster-carr-supplying-to-int...

I would try the recommendation there of ensuring you have a business name on the order, or, contact their support - I've had to contact them a couple times and they were generally quite helpful.

Good luck.

I have successfully ordered and received parts from McMaster-Carr as an individual.

I'm not sure if this is a super variable experience or if it has changed over time (I first ordered from them in 2020).

I am a business of one and I've bought from McMaster-Carr often. A long time ago (like 25 years ago) it was harder to buy from them as a tiny company, but these days they take credit cards on an online shopping list like everyone else.

The website and all the part details are amazing. I've made many purchases from McMaster for personal / hobby use so I'm surprised to hear about difficulties purchasing from them.

We are in Ontario, Canada, if it matters. I know Quinn from blondiehacks orders from them without difficulty, so I’m not sure what it is about us that they don’t like. They tend to be very curt/nearing unfriendly in their responses.

There may be difficulties shipping cross-border (customs is hell) - so maybe you "need" to find an address just over the border in the US to ship to instead?

I do have a US PO Box, so I will try this next time. Thanks for the suggestion.

Those also don't usually allow "package" delivery (think UPS) but maybe something can be worked out. Some small post offices will accept a UPS delivery to "unit PO BOX number" but I don't think they're supposed to.

Aircraft spruce sells tubing in a variety of lengths, and ship to Canada. They're a good source for tubes that don't fit normal framebuilding supply inventories. They ship to Canada directly:

https://www.aircraftspruce.ca/

I've built a bike frame with their 4130 tubes.

Did they explicitly tell you that's why the order was cancelled? I've placed many personal orders with them and never had issues.

Their reply, verbatim:

Hi xxxx,

We only ship to large businesses and schools in Canada. We can't accept your order. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. You might want to try Fastenal or Motion Canada.

Lauren

I can pretty much guarantee that this is due to customs/import charges. Consumers will cancel orders over a surprise bill from that, a big business won't care at all or will have their own broker.

FWIW, one of the benefits of Fastenal is being able to walk in and browse the shelves (just ask them when they're not busy. Never had a problem)

idk. they made me get a commercial account. and their stock for my local shop leans heavily towards grade-8 construction fasteners and not the smaller machine screws that I generally use.

I just ordered 40 SS J Bolts from them for my home project after spending a couple of weeks fruitlessly trying to get them from a local company. I placed an order on the website and they showed up in 2 days.

bicycle tube for making bikes out of chromoly can be bought from many makers. The good stuff doesn't have uniform wall thickness but has thinner sides and thicker top/bottom for lower weight/stiffness. It should also have butted ends, meaning that it has thicker walls at the ends.

Either an electromagnetic gadget that reduces any object's weight or a wonky time machine. /s

Is that what the thing in Primer was supposed to do? Reduce weight?

cutting gemstones has a pretty low capital cost to get started, a couple of workbenches worth of grinding and polishing equipment plus a diamond-saw

there's lots of tutorials on youtube, seems like a gratifying hobby with a potential for profit if you take it seriously as a day job

Niche, NLA car parts for older cars. 3d print to prototype, machine with a mill and/or lathe. Or better, CNC mill.

If you're ignoring legality, then the list is very long. Choose something that you know and are interested in. Figuring out how to produce it quickly and in large quantities is a secondary concern.

My understanding is not that OP is looking to produce goods of questionable legality.

My understanding is that OP is setting aside legal issues such as zoning, etc for the moment and focusing on feasible business ideas.

However, I could be wrong.

It's only profitable if your time is worth nothing, but you can build a kit plane like the Vans RV-7 in a garage for around that startup cost.

Outside of small scale Etsy-tier tech/non-tech stuff? Nothing. What a garage is good for though is prototyping and prototyping related R&D. Given that you have a 20k-50k USD budget, perhaps you should look for cheap commercial property for rent.

I mean, building a jet engine from an old car turbocharger is not that difficult, you only have to manufacture the combustion chamber.

Wall Art, like posters, could be manufactured at home.

I've also been curios, for some time now, but got no concrete good examples. Good question! Hope you'll get some good answers!

If you're not interested in legality, then technically cooking meth or something similar (amphetamine, mephedrone or other drugs popular in the neighborhood) would bring the best ROI, but it might not best from safety perspective for a variety or reasons.

Delta 8 vape carts. The license to do it legally is easy to get. You can buy all the material you'll need from Marijuana Packaging and Fresh Bros. I used to run a small CBD business out of a rented shop in Minnesota.

https://marijuanapackaging.com/collections/filling-machines-...

https://freshbros.com/product-category/bulk-products

HP started in a garage. So did Apple.

And some dude built a nuke in his. Have fun.

Small mechanical and 3D-printed parts. Lockpicking kits, custom engraved objects.

Zombie box type stuff. (generator quieting devices)

Isn't the distillation process prone to explosions? How would one get started? How much capital is needed?

It's fairly safe if you operate in a well ventilated environment, have fail-safes in your still in case there is a pressure build up, and use electric elements instead of gas.

Plenty of people use gas, but I don't see why given the increased risk and cost.

For gin you need to make or buy neutral spirit first. Buying it is ideal as larger providers can make it cheaper and cleaner than you, but needs a license so you won't do this while you're developing a product.

Then you will likely use a pot still to make your final product. You can use the same equipment to do both processes if you have a modular design.

None of the above is set in stone - gin is a bit like jazz and breaking the rules is common.

Capital needed for distillation? Just watch an episode of Moonshiners on Discovery channel and you'll be set. Nothing you couldn't buy at Home Depot or the local hardware store for about $100.

You need the correct property zoning to operate a business from your basement.

Your house is very likely in a residential zone, which limits it to residential use only (some exceptions apply, allowing home office scenarios for people who live there, but limits employees from travelling to your house for work).

Why do these rules exist? Well, to regulate industrial expansion, limit noise, traffic and road congestion (parking) in residential areas.