Without knowing what you intend it’s a bit tough but my advice is always pretty much the same.
If you just want it made, regardless of who and how, start pitching it to designers they may take it up, otherwise it’s the same advice as always, can you do cad, can you program can you design a PCB, find those who can or better yet, start watching Youtube, it’s all there and you can do it yourself if you want. Got a 3d printer? Use it or you can get plates cut locally pretty cheap with water or laser cutting, PCBs are easy enough to order and relatively cheap.
Where everything gets caught up is the case, use an existing if you can to work out what you can, at least at the start as there is a lot of little things needed before that. You need to understand tolerances and get a base starting point. A lot of CAD is working off existing files as much as you can, no need to redraw the whole plate once you have a pattern you can start from.
If you want production you can work towards that but that’s further down the road. About the time you think you’re ready to start looking for machine shops for the prototype find someone to clean up the design to make it easier and cheaper to produce, since, just because you can doesn’t mean it’s practical. By the time you get that done you will probably have finally found a shop. Even then get a 3d printed version before you go to the shop, spending even $150 here can save you hundreds later when you realize you missed a hole or forgot something.
If you want just one and you are driven plan on 6 months, if you want production expect a year and a half to 2 years depending on how fast you work or you’re willing to pay. A single relatively simple case can run $600 or $700 and that’s not even using a 5 axis, you can easily spend that and more paying someone to do the drawings or even just refine them so do as much as you can yourself (you still have the electrical side as well). You will need several prototypes to get things perfect especially since you haven’t done this and while you may be happy with a few issues people buying will not when they pay those prices. When all that gets done, then you get the fun job of doing the whole thing again while finding an anodizer who meets the quality you expect. Most of their work is industrial not cosmetic, Ryan Norbauer did two interviews with Tahae Types and in one of them he talks about how much trouble finishes alone can be. You may want to listen to those just to see what all he deal's with when doing a case.
Regarding money, it's not a matter of not making money, it’s a matter of how much you are prepared to spend and very possibly lose. This is a hobby, and yes, some people make money on it, but pretty much every one of them lost money before they made money. This isn’t the typical spend money to make money, they simply lost money in the end. Business is hard but when it’s a hobby it’s worse, people are passionate and would rather eat the cost than compromise. You could easily get ten thousand or more in the hole and still not have anything you could sell.
So, I ask again, is this something you expect to make yourself or do you just want it made one way or another because it's always cheaper to let someone else do it and just buy what they made.
