In article ,
William Sommerwerck wrote:
Oh, so you didn't read my post after all. To reiterate, 63/37 is 13.80,
60/40 is 13.30. That's uh, let's see, oh yeah, less than 4%.
GASP!
Yes, I DID read your post, and Yes, I did understand exactly what you said.
To wit... that there was almost no difference in the prices of the 60/40 and
63/37 solders from your supplier. That's why I raised the question about why
there WAS such a large difference between Kester's solders.
I think it was plain from what I wrote that I was wondering why there was
almost no difference in your supplier's prices for solders from (presumably)
the same manufacturer, while Kester solders had a 20% difference. (See
above.) Must /everything/ be explained in excruciating detail five times
over?
I think you may have conflated two different issues here, when
comparing 60/40 and 63/37. One is the question of manufacture, one is
the question of distribution channel (hobby/retail vs. industrial).
I just did a lookup on Newark's website, comparing 23 AWG solders
manufactured by Kester. Take a look at the catalog page at
http://www.newark.com/jsp/content/pr...c127&page=2016
and the section on "44 series RA rosin core solder". They have both
63/37 and 60/40 alloy versions of many of the same sizes.
For the thinner-gauge varities, the prices for the two alloys seem to
be quite close... e.g. for 25-gauge, the 60/40 is $34.15 and the 63/37
is $34.72 (about 1%). 21-gauge is $24.54 and $25.17 (about 2%),
18-gauge is $22.80 and $24.77 respectively (about 9%).
The only really big disparity in favor of 60/40 is in the heavy
16-gauge size ($23.20 and $32.53 respectively). Perhaps this reflects
the fact that 16-gauge is used less commonly these days, or perhaps
Newark is just low in stock?
So... based on this evidence, it looks to me as if Kester does not
necessarily have a major price skew between the two alloys, at least
not in the gauges typically used for PC board assembly. This suggests
that the price disparity you cited, may have much more to do with the
pricing policies of the one retailer you mentioned (MCM) than they do
with the manufacturer's wholesale price. MCM might be pricing the
63/37 as a "premium" product, or perhaps they sell less of it and so
tend to amortize the per-SKU overhead costs over a smaller nmber of
units?
This happens over and over and over and over and over and over and over and
over, and not just to me. It's because people don't read carefully, then
think about what they've read. Believe me, I sometimes am about to respond
to a post, then discover I'm mis-understood it.
Yup. Happens to me too. As a language, English has enough room for
ambiguity and misunderstanding to make life interesting at times.
FYI, when one of the earlier posters said he'd checked solder prices
"from his supplier", I don't think he stated a brand at all... and yet
your reply seems to have assumed that he was *not* referring to
Kester. If you did assume that (and I'm only sorta assuming that you
assumed it :-) it might have misled you a bit.
--
Dave Platt AE6EO
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