Can anyone explain this price to me...

[The_Doctor]

without requiring words like shyster, ripoff, scuzzball, pirate, extortionist, charlatan, leech, filibuster, barnacle, bashi-bazouk, or any other such epithet....

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/laser-modules/6973507

?

[absolom7691]

Probably because it is on back order. It says they're out but often people will click "Buy" without reading and then will give slamming reviews about how they didn't get their product. I see sellers do this on ebay too. When out of stock, they will price things so high that no one will buy it. That's the only thing I can think of.

[The_Doctor]

Have you ever seen a review on RS. Just wondering, because I don't think I have. I did one once, and they didn't publish that. Was a good one too, but I said 'if it was good enough for NASA it's good enough for me' (about some neat thermal conductive pad), and I guess mentioning NASA fell foul of their extremely strict rules on mentioning any kind of firm or trademark by name.

Anyway, I doubt it's the back order thing. That doesn't usually put a price up much. Have a look at all the other items from 'Global laser' on RS pages, and other sources besides. A person might still be able to 'explain' that firms are obliged to pay Nichia house-and-yacht money for a single diode and can't use bluray reader diodes in their products, but for that cost the seller had damn well better be able to prove they're not ripping out old blurays to make more profit than a crack dealer. And given that no such restrictions on cost or availibility affect red diodes in this extreme way, most of RS's laser prices are VERY hard to understand!

Ten years ago they were heavy, but I could at least understand it then. But not now. I love RS, they never let me down, they trust me with a credit account, and in turn I never let them down. They're indispensible. I willingly pay over the odds several times just to support them because I value them that much, But there are limits! And I can't help wondering if they, as well as their buyers, are being raped up the rear end forcibly in this matter of small diode lasers.

[mixedgas]

That is a scientific grade lab laser. Its being sold at a price the market will accept. A university biology professor would not bat a eyelash at that price. A few people will pay it, so that is the price. For some situations, time is money, and staff thus do not have time to be cheap. It also is precision aligned to the housing, isolated from the case, and will work out of the box with a excellent MTBF.

I'm building up a similar grade device for the company I work for. I spent one hundred just on the optics, sixty-eight for a five mW circularized 637nm diode, and fifty for the case. I'm not even done buying parts yet. Because if I'm charging a customer one hundred and fifty dollars an hour plus expenses to fix their 200 thousand dollar system, a broken or cheap alignment laser is a disaster. Especially when I'm 1500 miles from home. We take a small loss on service in trade for enhanced reputation, so 150$ a hour is reasonable.

Would a 20$ red pointer in a lathed mount made quickly do the task? Yes, but if it failed 45 minutes into a four hour task, I'm screwed and may have to expensively extend my flight. Even so the 20$ pointer is in the 48 pound tool kit, as well.

As a business rule of thumb, you have to charge between 3.7 and 5 times what it costs you to make something to be remotely profitable. We can see this on PL when people make 55$ diode drivers, and doing the tech support and warranty with no margin quickly drives them out of the business.

BTW, Nichia's buy in cost is expensive(And perhaps excessive), but if you buy 10,000 pieces from them, their prices are very reasonable. Their R&D and Litigation costs are very high compared to their product price.

Consider that Nichia's diode fab line probably cost well over 50 million dollars to set up and run. They have to recover their initial costs.


Steve

[The_Doctor]

That is a scientific grade lab laser. Its being sold at a price the market will accept. A university biology professor would not bat a eyelash at that price. A few people will pay it, so that is the price. For some situations, time is money, and staff thus do not have time to be cheap. It also is precision aligned to the housing, isolated from the case, and will work out of the box with a excellent MTBF.

I'm building up a similar grade device for the company I work for. I spent one hundred just on the optics, sixty-eight for a five mW circularized 637nm diode, and fifty for the case. I'm not even done buying parts yet. Because if I'm charging a customer one hundred and fifty dollars an hour plus expenses to fix their 200 thousand dollar system, a broken or cheap alignment laser is a disaster. Especially when I'm 1500 miles from home. We take a small loss on service in trade for enhanced reputation, so 150$ a hour is reasonable.

Would a 20$ red pointer in a lathed mount made quickly do the task? Yes, but if it failed 45 minutes into a four hour task, I'm screwed and may have to expensively extend my flight. Even so the 20$ pointer is in the 48 pound tool kit, as well.

As a business rule of thumb, you have to charge between 3.7 and 5 times what it costs you to make something to be remotely profitable. We can see this on PL when people make 55$ diode drivers, and doing the tech support and warranty with no margin quickly drives them out of the business.

BTW, Nichia's buy in cost is expensive(And perhaps excessive), but if you buy 10,000 pieces from them, their prices are very reasonable. Their R&D and Litigation costs are very high compared to their product price.

Consider that Nichia's diode fab line probably cost well over 50 million dollars to set up and run. They have to recover their initial costs.


Steve

No. It is a price that 'A' market will accept. Even I, a totally unprofessional non-capitalist, know that there are markets and markets. They are not the same, never have been. Most people here wouldn't accept that price, no matter what their own wealth is. Maybe if the laser in question was explicitly graded and tested for reliable medical instrumentation it might be explicable, but in practise the only way a market can be supported at that rate for general tooling is when people are spending other people's money. Given how hard times are getting, instead of hitting the poor or looking for scapegoats to blame, people should instead be looking at waste like this. It usually shows up in big govt projects, paid for by public money. Small firms would go broke in a week paying prices like those. You could START a business for the cost of that tiny 5mW laser, and instantly destroy it too, with the same expense.

Never mind Nichia's big spend on R&D. I'm not going to cry for them. Let them do their own crying if it hurts. They got into that game, they knew the rules, and I'm quite sure they'll clean up in the long run because all they had to do was make themselves indispensible to a bulk market, which they have done several times over. I have great sympathy for Nakamura, but not for Nichia.

I understand very well that there is a market that will accept these prices, but that only explains the 'how'. Saying that your time is too important to justify waiting a little for someone who will make it at a decent price, or making one yourself if you have the means, is just another way to be lazy and profligate, and to me it doesn't matter which sector of society that comes from, it all looks the same. When the excuses come from the weak and the poor I have plenty of time and sympathy despite wanting to point out ways they (and I too) can do better, but when it comes from people with money to burn, and government departments and funding at their behest, I have no sympathy at all.

I can extend that sympathy to you given the cost of optics and other parts in a one-off project to keep a private firm operating their equipment, but that just makes you a victim too, no? When firms are putting these things off on to distibutor's shelves they should play by the rules they'd impose on anyone else: look at the market, see what competion can be done to constructively make it more available to people. An artist makign a unique item, or you, making a laser for a unique purpose, that's different. I know it's hard and expensive doing that. But the game changes the moment you try to sell bulk at a boutique price. That is NOT supportable unless you're willign to leech of public funding. You KNOW that very few private individuals would pay that for a 5mW 405 nm laser unless they were either ignorant, or unable to find a maker of such, or were spending public money. There is nothing honourable in exploiting these things. The world is held back by that, but advanced by all those who will dare to make their profit by lower costs and larger output. And no matter how small the market is for an off-shelf 5mW general purpose laser, it does not justify extortion.

EDIT:
To any who say 'it is not extortion, people can choose to go elsewhere', that is exactly my point. There ARE other markets, as I said. People should go there. Leave the greedy bastards high and dry. Between that, and the cheap Chinese imported modules, there is a world-full of difference, a large choice in scales on which to operate. I sold one-off lasers for a while, and got 200 quid each on eBay. It astounded me. I decided not to milk it. It felt too damn lucky, too good to be true. But I did put the money to good use.

[The_Doctor]

As a business rule of thumb, you have to charge between 3.7 and 5 times what it costs you to make something to be remotely profitable. We can see this on PL when people make 55$ diode drivers, and doing the tech support and warranty with no margin quickly drives them out of the business.

I think you've hit on the important thing there. I have always found it impossible to value my work. I mean, I used to repair electronic stuff for a second hand shop. And then the new stuff was cheaply made, disposable, and the effort to repair wasn't worth it because no-one wanted to pay. Skill, so demeaned, it was utterly demoralising. While I learned to make and design my own stuff with tools I built from whatever money I did earn, I never learned to set up a business because the brutality of ignorant expectation is a spectre that loomed over me always.

I agree with you that to survive doing anything of quality, we MUST find the right price or we can't justify the effort to guarantee what we do for someone. This is what angers me. Not what you said, I think you just told it like it is (though I've met many an engineer who would not complain at a fifth of your hourly rates). The real problem is simple credibility. When one firms charges vast costs for a thing that most here clearly understand can be done with a stock diode, a stock singlet lens, and a decent lathe and attention to tolerances, limits and fits, and another one does it for little more than costs, it really skews the valuation.

The examples at the 'top end' seem to me to leave a lot to be desired. In many cases I've seen costs in the UK that are clearly people funding their lifestyle! I mean, when I want to buy a milled-flat copper heatblock for water cooling I expect to pay for reasonable costs of tooling, materials, time, but NOT to subsidise their expensive Cotsold living when someone who has to accept a far meaner standard of living will do an excellent job more cheaply. I'd rather my money went to the person who will value it more. (Even so I prefer to do that in my own country if I can). I can sympathise with your situation of wanting to avoid expensive plane flights or cancellations, but I think in many cases the high prices are often based on soaking a market for all it can be milked for. It's disrespectful, no-one likes to be on the receiving end of that crap. If the top examples were better, more transparent, more cognisant with the way the rest of the world has to live, then the rest of the world will be able to value its stuff better too.

[mixedgas]

Really Now? My company works hard to keep its price down and quality up. Believe it or not, if we lowered our price we'd loose sales. Because no one expects us to be able to manufacture for less then the normal market cost. But we can, because we are vertically integrated, right down to crystal growth and optics coating.

A strange world in economics is the laser market. Perhaps that 405 nm diode module should be about five hundred dollars. In reality it sells a lot more units then you might think.

I assure you, there are many customers for that laser, and they do not cringe in the least at that price. Because they know if the warranty is needed, they will get service on a 800$ module.

Steve

[The_Doctor]

Really Now? My company works hard to keep its price down and quality up. Believe it or not, if we lowered our price we'd loose sales. Because no one expects us to be able to manufacture for less then the normal market cost. But we can, because we are vertically integrated, right down to crystal growth and optics coating.

A strange world in economics is the laser market. Perhaps that 405 nm diode module should be about five hundred dollars. In reality it sells a lot more units then you might think.

I assure you, there are many customers for that laser, and they do not cringe in the least at that price. Because they know if the warranty is needed, they will get service on a 800$ module.

Steve

Well ok. Maybe I'd feel better if they said they were selling insurance, not a laser.