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Originally Posted by Razor6
If you were to make several thousand of the Storm blocks could the price drop to around $50?
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No, unless it were being made in China, in which case, definitely.
A quick comparison:
Made for Quality
Raw cost of materials (copper, delrin, aluminium) is about $7 US.
The G4 has about bang on 35 minutes of total CNC run-time, of which exactly 18 minutes presently gets spent on the copper base-plate. These times exclude part change-over, which is about an extra minute per piece.
Copper plates are then ground to quickly remove the dirty and marked finish of the raw extruded copper bar. Copper plates are then machine lapped at an average of 5 minutes per plate.
All up we're looking at a total of around 45 minutes of machine time per block.
Add in quality nickel plated brass barbs, aluminium anodising, stainless steel bolts, springs, and the rest of the mounting kit made from quality sourced components, and that adds about a further $8 US to the price.
So all up, around $15 US for the raw components + 45 minutes of machine time. Machine time in the USA typically costs around $1/min, so you're looking at a base cost of manufacture of $60 US. Assume a block maker wants a measly 10% margin, and so does the end-retailer, plus shipping costs in-between, and you're looking at a final product cost of around $75US even in bulk.
Made for Kwality
Instead, could substitute Delrin for a bodge cheap plastic, and reduce raw material costs to ~$3 US per block
Mass produced cheap-ass steel and plastic pieces for mounting kits => ~$4 US per block
Copper machining done cheaply/inaccurately (no guarantee on critical alignment for certain important elements) could be done in ~15 minutes per plate including a basic ground finish flat to around 30-40 microns (instead of 5 microns).
Could get the plastic plates injection moulded with only follow-up machining for the details that are too fine for a mould to accurately reproduce. Once moulds are payed for, looking at $1/per plate + 5 minutes of machine time.
Cheap Chinese labor of $1US/hr + CNC machine time of ~$20US/hr, total production cost of around $20US/blk. Final sale price could be around $35US/blk.
Performance would vary from block to block due to the shortcuts.