"Chuck Harris" wrote in message
...
Ed Price wrote:

Designing and building a product to provide many years of use, and then
capable of being repaired without access to unique components and/or
exotic
service equipment, is a concept so rare as to be thought a scam.

Ed
wb6wsn


Imagine your cell phone if it was designed to be repaired, and used only
common components. It would be the size of a briefcase. Do you think
cell phones would be popular if they had to be briefcase sized?

What about spectrum analyzers that needed to be contained in several
6 foot high rack cabinets?

Is the world better or worse now that a 100MHz oscilloscope can be made
the size of a paper back book?

-Chuck, WA3UQV


We were talking about repair and service equipment, not consumer items. A
consumer item is expected to have a short life-cycle, and repairability is
often not a concern.

I never saw "multi-six-foot-rack analyzers"; the oldest & biggest I can
recall were Singer FIM analyzers, which were about 24" wide by 30" tall and
deep, and took four guys to move them (and the plug-in RF heads were a
one-man lift!). OTOH, everything inside was reachable and easily repairable.

If that 100 MHz scope can be built to have a reasonable cost to lifetime
ratio, then it could be considered a consumer item, and a non-repairable
investment. But to me, if I have to pay $10k or more for a piece of test
equipment, it had better last quite a few years and allow me to do
re-calibration and even moderately severe repair.

Ed