Now is the "Good Old Days" for Electronics
william chan
Posts: 1,326
Think about it, I now can purchase 0603 resistors for USD 0.3 cent or less each delivered to my office from element14.
I am going to order many reels of common resistor and capacitor values. The price can't get any lower than this.
Even packaging grains of beach sand into the reels should cost more than 0.3 cent each.
A few years from now, when nuclear war starts, meteorides fall from the sky, banks and currencies collapse or when aliens land,
we will look back and say those were the good old days when you can get a 1% accurate resistor for 0.3 cent each.
I am going to order many reels of common resistor and capacitor values. The price can't get any lower than this.
Even packaging grains of beach sand into the reels should cost more than 0.3 cent each.
A few years from now, when nuclear war starts, meteorides fall from the sky, banks and currencies collapse or when aliens land,
we will look back and say those were the good old days when you can get a 1% accurate resistor for 0.3 cent each.
Comments
0603 SMD parts are grains of sand aren't they? I can't read the markings on the darn things.:nerd:
Still, at only .03 cents apiece, I could save enough cash to afford one of those fancy USB Microscopes.
I always try to use resistor arrays, you get 4 tiny resistors in the one pack that's easier to handle than a single 0603 and they cost about the same, in fact 0.4 cents so that's 0.1 cents / resistor ! 5,000 on a reel costs me $21.38 , so that's 20,000 resistors but you can get them cheaper.
EDIT: for those who find it hard to believe (for some reason) that works out to zero point one of a cent per "resistor" or 1,000 for around one lousy dollar.
I have not checked but that would indeed be 3 cents not 30 cents.
When you are buying commercial manufacturing quantities of such components by the thousand on reels they are a lot cheaper. And cheaper still if you get them from upstream suppliers, not DigiKey.
30 cents gets you a micro-controller now a days. Kind of makes that 3 cent resistor look expensive