Rubbers are expensive because people are willing to pay the price. It is that simple.
The raw material that goes into a rubber is nothing compared to the final cost.
A pound of rubber will make how many top sheets?
All of you complaining about the cost of rubber are complaining about the wrong thing.
Manufacturing labor costs are not that much either. Usually the people that run the injection molding machines are not paid that much.
The real costs are in the research, making the molds, buying the machines and marketing. However, the machines that make the rubber can be easily modified to make many different types of rubber or sponges.
The Japanese are fanatical about quality control. This goes back over 50+ years.
http://www.qfdi.org/newsletters/deming_in_japan.html
I don't see any magic in making top sheets. Making the mold is expensive but I bet the part where the pips are us pretty much the same from top sheet to top sheet. Only the label needs to be redone and this is easy with modern CNC machines. I have a mechanical engineer working for me that said I could buy a solid sheet of super ball type rubber that would be hard and bounce but not legal for cheap.
I think the hard part is making the sponge. Making a consistent sponge cant be easy. Even TSP sells rubbers with a thickness tolerance. The bubbles must be a consistence size throughout the sponge.
Zeio, the US subsidizes the costs of a lot of products. Notice that our prices for T05 are higher than other country's prices. The same goes for drugs and other products. That is because the US is where the money is. However, in the case of TT rubber, there aren't as many TT players per million as there are in other countries. I don't think we are guilty of anything except having too much money because the ratio of what we make to the cost of goods is relatively low even if the price of good is high. It is not hard to find YouTube videos where people complain that ALMOST everything is more expensive in the US but each item is a lower percentage of the average take home pay.
BTW, there are shortages on a lot of things how due to the CCP-virus. Car manufacturers are having a hard time getting electronic parts. My company is also having a hard time getting electronic parts. Lead times are as long as 6 months. My company is not a just in time company. I am sure the just in time companies are suffering big time now.
So go back to the beginning. The TT manufacturers will charge what the market will bear.
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