Re:Man compares his prosthetic hand to a 3D-printed one
by Xenmen on Sunday April 20, 2014 @01:11PM
(#7617556)
Okay, sure. There's R&D for the $40,000 arm.
There's R&D for the $50 arm too. They didn't just download the code and print plans from Github.
Justifying a fourty grand pricetag based on R&D costs is absurd in the face of this competing arm (which we should note is not actually $50, just $50 to replace plastic printed components).
The point is that the price difference is several orders of magnitude, and R&D was independently conducted by both groups, therefore R&D cannot justify the price difference alone.
Agree. It's headline grabbing for sure. But when you really boil something down the actual material cost isn't always that big factor in the final product cost, in low volume quantities at least. [1]
There are overhead costs (some of which you have already highlighted) [2] that are necessary in running an actual company that makes products. These costs are not always visible or obvious.
[1] An example might be comparing the cost of a low volume production car such as the Porsche 911 Turbo S to a high volume car like a Honda Accord.
[2] I would also add legal and insurance costs which, with a device like this, are almost certainly not trivial.