I haven't looked too carefully, but I suspect those "needs to be strong" parts could mostly be cnc machined with an inexpensive hobby CNC like a 3020, from aluminiumn sheet/bar stock.
That's what I was thinking, too. All but one of those parts can be easily milled from flat plate. The yoke end is a bit harder, but yoke ends are cheap standard parts and there's probably an off the shelf solution.
The ball joints they use are standard R/C car parts. Those are available in in a stronger form, nylon with a brass ball, for EUR 0.53.[1] It won't be hard to strengthen this design so it can do useful work.
Smiles from Detroit. I would look to press those parts, since most contact surfaces are potentially convex and variant-depth parts appear superfluous to requirements. With a shared punch and die you could pull the nest off a laser, press them all in parallel, and break them after the parallel press-forming. Should be cheaper than injection because the cycles can be faster, the material can be stronger, there's only one die, and the unload will be easier?
Yes. Here are very similar parts produced with a punch press.[1] In Silicon Valley. Or in China.[2]
This sort of thing is probably about $40,000 for the first part, $0.05 for each additional part. Designing and making the custom dies is expensive. Banging out the parts is cheap. Mass production works.
