On 04/20/2017 05:28 AM, Aiden Koh wrote:
> I'm sorry if I sound unsubstantial; I had once contacted stem base > suppliers in china, and they do say that they have the product line ISO > 9001 certified, but I have a hunch that they subcontract the orders to > another workshop. The US manufacturers carry the parts needed, and they're > more reputable too. High-quality parts would equate to less of a headache. Owning a small manufacturing company, I can comment with some authority. I think that you're hopelessly naive about this proposal. Do you have at least $1 million at your disposal? That would probably pay for a minimally automated plant. And maybe another $mil for R&D. About buying American. Dream on. Very few electronics products are made in America anymore. It's almost all done in China, Taiwan and a few other far eastern companies. All the US companies do is mark up the product. A lot. If you do find a piece manufactured in the US, you have a fiduciary duty to your investors and stockholders to investigate far eastern manufacture of the part. Example: A Meanwell 15 volt 15 watt power supply. About $25 from Mouser. Less than $3 directly from Meanwell when I buy 100 pieces. Cheaper when I buy more. Another example. Our induction heater uses a large buck converter toroidial inductor. From Magnetisc, low quantity price was $35. Somewhere around $20 in quantity 100. We found out who their Chinese manufacturer is. $2, quantity 200. The next thing you need to know about the Chinese is that they will tell you anything you want to hear. It's not lying in their culture. It is culturally very difficult to say "no". We address that problem by having an agent in China. He's a Chinese citizen with an American technical education who speaks flawless English. He actually visits the factories and verifies that we are getting what we spec'd and what we paid for. Which brings up the next thing about China. It is ALWAYS cash up front. Most manufacturers will accept an escrow service which gives us some reassurance but each order is still somewhat of a shot in the dark. Now a comment on the tube itself. I worked for a couple of years for a man named Ed Kay, retired Chief Engineer at Tung Sol's tube manufacturing plant in NJ. Being an amateur glass blower and interested in vacuum tubes, I relentlessly picked his brain. There were and are SO many little trade secrets that go into designing and building a successful tube. Take electrode treatment, for example. You can't just have them made and use them in a tube. There are several chemical and mechanical treatments that must be performed first. For Nixie tube, Dalbor knows but he's not telling. The point of this paragraph is to try to convey to you just how much R&D you have ahead of you before you design your piece of manufacturing equipment. I think that a $50 tube might be possible IFF you have very deep pockets backing you. No way at the price you quoted. And we still haven't addressed the potential market for Nixie tubes at any price. I don't think it's there. We Nixieonians constitute a tiny market. What product do you see that might consume say, 100,000 tubes a year? John -- John DeArmond Tellico Plains, Occupied TN http://www.tnduction.com <-- THE source for induction heaters http://www.neon-john.com <-- email from here http://www.johndearmond.com <-- Best damned Blog on the net PGP key: wwwkeys.pgp.net: BCB68D77 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/64401dc8-b0c0-c8a9-cd56-9a08439efcfc%40neon-john.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
