On 12/15/2013 4:58 PM, The Daring Dufas wrote:
Have you ever wondered what tools the guys who service MRI machines
with those giant magnets use? ^_^

http://intercon1978.com/hardy-mri-to...-3-t-tool-kit/

That's the list price, but nobody pays list. Well, if an individual
approached them about buying one item, that person would probably be
charged list.

The actual price will vary, depending on who's buying it.

As for why it costs so much, if for legal purposes the tools or parts
must be sourced from only certified suppliers, and the market for
those materials is limited, then yeah, even seemingly routine stuff is
going to be pretty spendy, compared to the standard retail market. But
it's an entirely different market, with different requirements. You
wouldn't want to risk cheap Chinese counterfeit parts getting
installed into an MRI, for instance.

Selling this stuff is within my brother's line of work, and boy, has
he got stories. One of his favorites has to do with a major domestic
manufacturer who asked him for a quote on a replacement breaker for
their plant. Those suckers are massive, since they're industrial, and
priced accordingly. So, one genuine US-built and certified breaker,
sized such and such - $6000.00.

My brother had an exclusive contract with the plant that built the
breakers. Nobody, not even the plant, could sell them for less than my
brother's price, so he knew he had no competition and was certain he
had the sale. But then the head engineer at this manufacturing plant
told him they were going with the low bidder. My brother was floored.
_What_ low bidder, he asked. Well . . . the engineer at this plant
told him that the local hardware store had put in a bid. They'd
offered the very same breaker for less than a thousand bucks.

Now, there's no way a local hardware store would stock or even be able
to procure these things. Plus, the price was impossible. My brother
knew the cost to manufacture these, and if the breaker was legit, they
would lose thousands of dollars on the sale. He advised the engineer
of this, and warned him that the breaker had to be counterfeit. The
engineer blew him off. My brother said, okay then - but if you have
trouble with it, take it up with the hardware store, because it didn't
come from me, and my source says it didn't come from them, either.

You can write the ending to the tale, natch: breaker failed in very
short order. The head engineer went to my brother for help, but he
couldn't provide any documentation to prove it had been produced by
the domestic plant that supposedly built it. Too bad, so sad - you'll
have to ask your local hardware store guy if he can fix or replace it.