resistance soldering unit

That makes It £389.99 pounds in the way they normally convert $to £ plus Vat of course :¬)

And considering the actual buying power of the GBP, that's a bargain. ;-)=

wolf k.

My Mate was a remember of the S4 group and they Bought all the bits from Maplins to make there own. Inc a case and a Soldering iron handle to hold the Electrode aprox £20

CE Marking is a bit of a minefield, and my understanding is that you don't actually have to pay thousands of pounds to put a CE sticker on your product. You can just buy the sticker from RS and slap it on! There is an obvious catch though - if you've paid thousands of pounds then what you've hopefully paid for is for someone who knows what they're doing to check that your product complies to all the regs. You can check this yourself though (and document it), but there are a heck of a lot of regs to understand. The catch comes if someone kills themselves on your product and you've missed a vital part of the regs...

Anyway, I've used "The Solder Connection" professionally and I can say that the service is excellent. It won't take much to change the electrodes. The earth connection is easy, and for the "live" connection I used a wooden file handle with a pin vice inserted into it and a silicone (flexible) lead coming out of the top of the handle. The pin vice was drilled out to take a 4mm carbon rod. I use a modified Exactoscale RSU, but I've been told that they don't intend to re-introduce it.

The Solder Connection have told me that they have a supply of these Super Chief 250 resistance soldering stations. Their price is =A3299.00 plus VAT which seems reasonable considering the price in the States and the cost of getting it over here. They can be contacted on 01291

Nice little earner, given what you need to make one.

MBQ

That's actually a reasonable price, given what you need to make one ;-) ...and pay people's wages, and pay for development and regulatory approval, and electricity bills, and corporation tax, and building rental/mortgage, then the reseller has to pay people's wages and on and on and on..

My last job was in sub-contract manufacture, and a general rule of thumb was that the materials cost around 60% of the sale price depending on the type of product. That's not retail, that's from the manufacturer to the retailer, who also has to make some money after paying his overheads. And would you like to pay to import one of those from the USA at that weight?

And you should never start a sentence with the word "and" :-)

and you should never generalise

A good rule of thumb for the model railway market (i.e. not mobile phone type mega volumes) is retail price of about 4x to 5x component cost.

I think it's overprices by at least 50% compared to something that could do the same job.

I'm referring to manufacturing in the UK, importing a heavy itenm does add cost. The OP referred to London Road Models supplying again at =A3150 which implies I'm actually being kind.

MBQ