Unless you plan on going into production yourself, have a sheetmetal shop make a few for you if they will. just get them the material you will need it made from and let them make it. ASK them if to sandwich it between some scrap would make it possible to punch. They will get the idea and be more open to making it for you.

Thanks For the info. maybe I have been using the wrong terminology then because I’m trying to avoid more tooling costs. perhaps custom cut would be better and have the cutting done with cnc router.

Jason, When you refer to “die cut” are you hoping to have a steel rule die made and then one with a clicker press knock them out? If so, that may not be feasable. It will depend on the thickness of the material and the durometer (hardness). Ive worked sheetmetal for a lifetime and thought this would be an option for some thin polycarbonate I needed mass produced. Injection molders said it wasn’t possible. I had sheetmetal shops quote this since I didn’t have the equipment, and finally bought a steel rule die. The cut was terrible and the process was SLOW. The die deformed and ended up getting repurposed to cut card stock for packaging. I learned from that.

As a result, I ended up having a 4 off punch and die built along with a custom engineered (by myself) hydraulic press. I went from 45 cent rediculous per piece price “quoted” to 2 cents. Process time per part is less than a second. I’ll be using the same technology to be making 3 other parts since I’m only paying for material now. I’ve got 5k invested in the entire setup, and a bunch of initial development time. Well worth it since without that component I wouldn’t have a product.