Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware
by vortico on Friday June 29, 2018 @04:59AM
(#17423306)
Can't. People require a particular amount of support, your marketing costs scale with product sold, and international shipping costs can't get any cheaper. The baseline is not much less for Behringer as it is any reputable modular manufacturer. What they do instead is reduce the parts, manufacturing, and R&D/unit cost, but they're still restricted from going below $50-100/unit even if they could magically clone modules.
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Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware
by RossBencina on Friday June 29, 2018 @09:43AM
(#17424460)
The point of this article is "making everything ourselves." What you're describing only applies if the traditional manufacturer/sales channel/consumer paradigm is maintained. I'm proposing to think further outside the box than that.
For an example of what is possible: you can buy Arduino clone hardware on eBay direct from China much cheaper than anything from authorised suppliers.
Any successful "making things ourselves" community (consider Pure Data as an example) is self-supporting and doesn't expect support from manufacturers/creators. Similarly, such a community spreads awareness without marketing investment.
Re:How to Make Everything Ourselves: Open Modular Hardware
by vortico on Friday June 29, 2018 @07:03PM
(#17428502)
You have to buy the aluminum bars, screws, brackets from somewhere. It will always be cheaper for a manufacturer to buy them in bulk at a price much cheaper than you could get them and sell it to you for cheaper than the sum of the parts (at your price).