Heath's "cheap" parts: WAS DX-100 Project

[Chuck Penson]

On Mon, 28 Jun 1999 21:56:16 +0100 Steve Harrison <ko0u at OS.COM> writes:
At 04:03 PM 1999-06-28 -0500, Don wrote:

>Sorry to disagree, Dick. Heath always used the cheapest and usually
>the lowest grade of any material available

Sorry to disagree, Don, but there is no virtually evidence to support
this statement. The fact is Heath bought parts from name-brand
manufactures. These included transformers from Chicago Transformer,
switches from Centralab, meters from Simpson and Weston (in the DX-100
years), capacitors from Mallory, resistors from IRC, relays from AB,
connectors from Cinch, tubes from GE, and later on, semiconductors from
Fairchild, to name only a few.  And Heath was quick to advertise this.
Early catalogs make a point of naming names of suppliers.

Further, Heath specified parts that were well rated for the task at hand.
And many parts were conservatively rated.  Evidence of this can be found
with no more than casual inspection of the top or bottom of any DX-100.
Now and then parts failed but failures were almost always related to
engineering miscalculations, not the quality of the parts themselves. And
of course we can call upon statistics as well. In 500,000 capacitors, a
handful are bound to be bad--even with good QA.

The reason Heath was able to buy parts cheaply is because it bought parts
by the hundreds of  thousands at a time. (Heath was Fairchild's single
largest customer.)  In many cases Heath cut deals with manufacturers for
custom made parts.

Heath exhasted its stock of surplus parts very quickly and I doubt if
very many found their way into amateur equipment (especially after the
AT-1), and supposing they had, those parts were originally bought by the
military, and the military wasn't buying crap either.

Chuck Penson / WA7ZZE

Sponsored by the City of Tempe 

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