Re: CV and mad panic behaviour
Reply #1835 –
Yep, crazy price gouging the Feds did stuff all about it.
The basic ones cost about 3c each to make, a machine knocks out about 10000 per hour, ~ 3 masks every second. They should/can be packaged and sold in bulk to end users for about 10c each and still make a tidy profit, that's a machine line earning $1000/hr and these things have been running 24x7 for nearly 6 months! For a single line at 65% duty cycle that's $2.85M/6mnths with a direct cost overhead of about $0.8M/6mnths. ( btw., The Feds sent in the army to offer free help/staffing to improve manufacturing productivity at local factories, the industry thinks they might be achieving or exceeding 85% duty cycle at an even lower unit cost. )
But the public buy them for about $1 a piece at best, most of that cash going to the middleman/retailer not the manufacturer, at the moment 100% of what we make locally is sold, so a single manufacturing line makes the middlemen/retailers about $25M in the same 6 Mnth period!
You can spray them with pure alcohol and then sterilise them in an oven, 85°C - 90°C for > 45mins, but that adds to the cost of the mask. It's only practical because the public are forced to pay a $1 each!