Re: [DIYbio] Why are PCR machines and biotech equipment in general so expensive

I agree with the previous folks. In simplest terms it comes down to
the economics 'law' of supply and demand.

Take a piece of hardware like a smartphone. There is so much quality
control that you probably don't think about, it is insanely expensive
and time consuming. Who hasn't experienced their smartphone doing
something dumb or buggy? While it annoys phone users, it usually isn't
a major loss of money. In science that could ruin an experiment (which
are often very very expensive), so end-users are a lot more cautious
and willing to pay for products that are as bug-free as possible. This
also means that less well-tested products will have a harder time
gaining market share, scientists are less swayed by flashy marketing
(less, not completely immune) than the average hardware consumer
because, well just look at all the people being scammed left and right
with TV infomercial products, kickstarters, etc.

On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 8:47 AM, Dennis Oleksyuk <dennis@oleksyuk.me> wrote:
> Because building hardware is harder than building software. It requires more
> skills, time, and money. That's the main reason which applies to hardware
> development as a whole.
>
> Because the number of customers who buy scientific equipment is small.
> Therefore the manufacturer has to divide the development cost between a
> smaller number of customers.
>
> Because the cost of consumables and labor for solving a particular problem
> is usually higher than the cost of the machine. Therefore the buyers are
> more interested in saving in labor and consumable cost rather than hardware
> prices.
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 8:42 AM Gerald Trost <gerald.trost@mail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> this is only my honest opinion from my experience:
>>
>> I bought a open source 3d printer - in industry they had
>> such things for 3 decades - but they costed
>> several hundred thousands
>>
>> the open source thing works fine but for 90% of the time
>> its in maintenance and I am the machine engineer
>>
>> I think the open source things are not yet reliable enough.
>>
>> Sent: Friday, April 21, 2017 at 1:57 PM
>> From: "Ujjwal Thaakar" <ujjwalthaakar@gmail.com>
>> To: DIYbio <diybio@googlegroups.com>
>> Subject: [DIYbio] Why are PCR machines and biotech equipment in general so
>> expensive
>> How do the economics work out and why have we not seen bigger companies
>> bring down the process in the advent of open source equipment as well as new
>> startups building low-cost equipment?
>>



--
-Nathan

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