Manufacturing trade-off tools
Estimate where each process becomes commercially sensible before locking in product architecture.
Belfast, Northern Ireland product design engineering
Product design engineering support for physical products.
Orion Design is Andrew Hunter's product design engineering practice for people developing physical products. I help founders, teams, and organisations make clearer decisions about concepts, prototypes, manufacturing routes, product cost, and launch readiness.
- Focus
- Physical product design and engineering
- Support
- Advice, hands-on help, strategic direction
- Path
- Concept, prototype, manufacture, launch
Self-serve starting point
Open the tool library
Use the tools to pressure-test a decision.
Compare manufacturing routes, estimate costs, review concepts, and bring clearer assumptions into the next conversation.
Direct support
Approachable advice when the decision is live
Get in touch when you need experienced help interpreting the trade-offs for a real product, supplier conversation, or launch plan.
Capabilities
Built around the decisions physical-product teams actually struggle with.
Use the tools for a first pass, or bring the question directly to Orion when you need experienced judgement. The work usually centres on what to prototype next, which process to back, how to reduce complexity, and whether the product case is strong enough to proceed.
Early sustainability review
Make value and impact visible early enough to influence specification, not just downstream reporting.
Systems-level product thinking
Connect commercial feasibility, technical readiness, sustainability, and human value in one place.
Representative work
Examples from the kind of product work Orion supports.
These projects show the range of problems involved: technical packaging, mechanism development, consumer products, and design-for-manufacture work where the right early decision saves time, cost, and rework later.
Causeway Sensors
Representative spin-out product development work where technical packaging, usability, and manufacturable enclosure thinking had to progress together.
View representative case studies
Rolltack
Concept-to-manufacture work that depended on form development, portability, part strategy, and a realistic view of when to commit to production tooling.
Explore product design services
Ambulo
Mechanism-led development work where geometry, manufacturability, detailing, and controlled iteration mattered more than superficial styling.
Read about Andrew HunterTool library
Interactive tools paired with explanatory content.
Use these tools to compare manufacturing routes, test assumptions, and validate decisions before committing budget. They answer specific questions — but product development is not a series of isolated decisions. The output of one feeds the input of another.
Manufacturing Payoff Visualiser
Compare setup cost and unit cost across 3D printing, CNC machining, vacuum casting, and injection moulding so the decision is driven by data, not intuition.
Open ToolProduct Purpose Framework
Rank a product concept against a scored dataset and inspect its balance on a radar chart to separate ideas that are merely interesting from ideas that deserve momentum.
Open ToolAssembly Time Estimator
Estimate manual assembly labour at concept stage using part count, fastening logic, handling effort, and QA checks so labour cost does not get locked in too early.
Open ToolCarbon Footprint Estimator
Compare footprint drivers across material, manufacturing process, transport, and use-phase assumptions to make sustainability a product-legitimacy question, not just a materials question.
Open ToolPrefer a phased route?
Use the roadmap if your team needs to know what to tackle next.
Some projects need more than a standalone calculator. The ready-to-launch roadmap groups the work into practical phases so you can move from idea validation to launch planning with less wasted effort.
Follow the product-development phases.
Start with the biggest risk: concept strength, engineering complexity, manufacturing route, or commercial viability.
Open the ready-to-launch roadmapRead the supporting guides by decision type.
Browse the articles by concept, manufacturing, sustainability, or launch so the next decision is grounded in context, not just a number.
Browse the guidesEngineering essays
Guides that complete the answer.
When a calculator is not enough, the guides explain the trade-offs, common mistakes, and follow-on decisions that matter most.
Browse guidesWhen does injection moulding become cheaper?
Break-even is only one part of the manufacturing decision. Timing, demand certainty, and design stability matter too.
Read guideThe most sustainable product is the one you never make.
The Product Purpose Framework treats sustainability as a product-legitimacy question, not just a materials question.
Read guideEstimating assembly time during design.
Part count, join count, and reorientation are all signals of recurring labour before detailed industrial engineering begins.
Read guideBuilding a hardware business case.
Connect reachable demand, unit economics, operating cost, and payback so a promising concept is tested properly before scale.
Read guideCase study
From concept uncertainty to production direction.
Orion Design helps teams decide what to prototype, when to tool, what to simplify, and how to balance product value with manufacturing reality.
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manufacturing routes compared in one visual model
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point scoring model for reviewing product ideas
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View case studies
live tools supporting manufacturing, sustainability, process, finance, and supplier-readiness decisions