[Elecraft] K2 vs K3 re: final COST

[N2EY at aol.com]

In a message dated 7/1/07 5:55:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
ncsailors at yahoo.com writes:


> I doubt if it is SMT devices and auto-board
> stuffers that made the economy of K3 what it is.

I think it is. 

> Electronic integration marches on. 



 Remember the
> 
> Collins 75A4, or Heath Marauder?  

Yes. They had several sources of cost:

1) Lots of small-run custom parts
2) Lots of expensive parts
3) Lots of assembly labor (75A-4) or lots of manual-writing labor (any Heath)

Remember that both of those were designed, manufactured and sold long before 
CADD or desktop publishing were available. When a change was made, they 
*literally* went back to the drawing board.


Now it is possible
> 
> to put just about everything, save the large L's,
> into siicon.  

I don't think so.

There's a lot of quartz in a K2 or K3. Lots of relays and fairly large 
capacitors, too.

But even if almost all of a K3 could be put on silicon, that doesn't mean 
it's the best way to do the job. 

I suspect one bright engineer on
> 
> the Elecraft staff - could layout 5 or 6 MOSIS
> silicon circuits (ala USC/ISIS) - to cover a
> large percentage of a K3, add in a LSI Logic
> device for the DSP, and perhaps 1 Analog Devices
> linear device - for the K4 control logic -
> and the whole K4 could be integrated into just
> the Control/User Panel.  Maybe pack it all -
> into the ATU.
> 

Maybe. But there would be a lot of issues to deal with, such as coupling and 
isolation, high power RF, etc.

The problem with custom parts is that for a small-run item like a ham rig, 
the economics may not be there, compared to using as many stock parts as 
possible. The 75A-4 and Marauder used a lot of custom parts because there was no 
other option back then. 

There's also the factor of how long we expect a system to last, and what we 
consider the ultimate failure mode and repairability. We hams tend to expect 
our rigs to last decades, not years, and we expect them to be repairable, not 
"if it breaks after the warranty runs out, go buy another one". 

> I remember, not too many years ago (88), 
> having a meeting in a room at Bell Lab's Allentown
> facility (or was it NJ) - and behind me on
> the wall of that lab - which had a brass plaque
> which read "... in this lab in 1953 (or whatever
> the correct year was), the first transistor
> IC was invented".   Wow - time marches on!
> 

1959, IIRC. 

> I saw it again, when I peeked inside a 2007
> IC-706MKIIG at the top board - and saw
> literally 100's and 100's of SMT devices,
> on 1 board.  And we are seeing it again, in
> the soon to be shipped K3.  Wow - can't
> wait.
> 

One of the things that made Heathkit and other kit companies like Eico and 
EFJohnson was the economics of electronics manufacture. In the days of
point-to-point wiring, the labor of assembling even a simple piece of 
electronics was a considerable part of the selling price. Heath etc. could offer a 
competitive price by eliminating that labor cost. That had to be balanced 
against the cost of writing the assembly manuals, and having to come up with designs 
that didn't need lots of test gear. Automated assembly largely eliminated 
that cost advantage for Heath.

Elecraft's advantage so far has been the use of elegant design (hence the 
name) to minimize the number of custom parts used, and the overall number of 
parts used. Look at a basic K2 - it's a couple of small circuit boards in an 
ingenious cabinet, with almost no wires at all. The K3 is a somewhat new direction, 
in that the components are boards. 

73 de Jim, N2EY


**************************************
 See what's free at 
http://www.aol.com.