I am in the process of getting industrial quote for kits to make the cardboard cam designs shown below. I have an industrial background, but I have been struck by the difficulty of dealing with industry, even with my insiders perspective. Even when you understand whats going on and request a quote, you may not be able to read it or fully understand the implications of buying tooling or delivery schedules because many industries have arcane practises such as'looking after the mould for you' or You ordered a thousand but we deliver by the pallet load and thats 800, or We need space to drive the 42 ton delivery lorry and for the forklift truck to offload at your (ware) house. I have sorted these problems out in good time, but it reminds me of a practical exercise I did with a group of yr11 pupils, studying Resistant materials.
Using a speakerphone, they phoned up a local branch of B&Q and asked for Medium Density Fibreboard, 2400mm x 1200 mm x 12mm and got a price of £14. Another pupil then phoned up ten minutes later and asked for 8' x 4' x 1/2" MDF and got a price of £18. Interesting result as they are exactly the same thing!
Forunately the internet has made it a great deal simpler since then to get comparative price quotes, but as with any aspect fo life, the first time you do something, it will always be more intense and take much longer than later!
Here are a few things described industrially for you to guess what they are... and where they are used
Gross of No.2 BZP Twinfast CSK 15mm
Parana 44mm PAS 2.4m
100W BC cap
2x2GB DDR2
16x 4.7GB
Answers later