Baxi Solo 3 PF50 boiler - Chattering relay fault

[gas4you]

 

[Balenza]

Agile wrote

If you have a full time job with a reasonable salary I am surprised that you seem to want to do all your home repairs yourself.

Most people call the relevant expert for the product and relax themselves on the golf course or at the local restaurant.

Its usually only unemployed people who are forced to try to repair things themself as a result of lack of income.

Then he wrote

I think he is getting at you Chris!

Looks like he got to you first .
I think this guy would have you for breakfast in the electronics department Tone and your afraid to make such an admission.
Your probably an advocate of faulty boiler PCB,s anyway as it keeps you in work.
Heaven forbid should an engineer such as the OP start designing pcb,s for your customers combi boilers.

 

[underwurlde]

Thank you!

 

[Agile]

I dont have a problem with anything! The Chilean Isla Negra ( Black Island ) wine is quite good to replace the 2006 Dumisani which is very poor even if its 14%. I am listening to Shona music from the net radio and about to eat chick liver with rice and brocoli. I am fine.

The regulations dont encourage any CORGI to repair PCBs. Its not that I cannot but why should I?

This afternoon I replaced a PCB on a Potty boiler. But it was replaced with a new one. Thats the corect procedure for an RGI. The SA tenant will be invited to the next Braai.

I will repair the old one and keep it as a workshop spare. If there is a socially deprived person then its available for them one day but for landlord and normal customers its new ones.

Tony

 

[underwurlde]

No one is suggesting that a CORGI, or otherwise, actually repair the actual PCBs. I'm guessing that CORGI registration in itself does not qualify someone to do that (and before everyone misreads what I am saying & accuses me of being arrogant again, I don't mean that for any given individual that he or she may not have the skills).

(I note that the spell checker tried to incorrectly change I'm to i'm).

 

[Balenza]

Agile wrote

I dont have a problem with anything!

Were your ancestors on the Board of Longitude ?

Its not that I cannot but why should I?

Cheaper service for your customers ?.

But it was replaced with a new one. Thats the corect procedure for an RGI

Is it any wonder manufacturers are churning out inferior pcb,s.

 

[Softus]

That is why I simply cannot be bothered with you...
.
.
<continues to be bothered>
.
.
The point of stating any qualifications I had at the start of the thread was so that people could respond at a certain level of understanding instead of the usual 'have you replaced the fuse?'.

But did you replace the fuse?

So, come on then Mr. Mouth, what experience do YOU have of the design & manufacture of products APART from the rubbish you've learnt down the pub?

That's none of your business.

What is 'softus' a spelling of anyway?

Nothing that I'm aware of, but it's the incorrect spelling of "Softus".

wondrous claims

What the hell are you blathering on about now?

Which of my words were too difficult? Please let me know and I'll use simpler ones for you.

If I can go down to poxy Tesco's and buy a DVD player for 20 quid which is far more complex than a boiler 'PCB' AND would obviously include the hidden costs of all those things you have listed, why would it cost so much to make a boiler 'PCB'?

Because boiler PCBs incorporate important safety features, and have to work reliably (although not all of them do), whereas most of the Tesco DVD players that cost £17.44 don't last as long as their warranty - I've bought six of them for rented properties (on behalf of skinflinty landlords) and had to return five. However, only a fool calls Tesco "poxy" for any reason other than basic envy; as a business, they're stupendously successful at what they do.

glaringly wrong than a naked nonse at a 5 year old's birthday birthday

And you're having a go at me for my typo's

No <sigh>, this was a reference to your original statement (and I did already say so), being that the PCB for your boiler "would cost less than £10 to make.". It wouldn't, it shouldn't, and it doesn't.

Am I bovvered? Do I look bovvered? Am I bovvered? Bovvered? Me?

Frankly, you do seem quite bovvered.

Nah, I think perhaps you may be right. No one is going to prove this argument anyway, so what's the point?

If you would just answer the questions that I first put to you, with sensible information, then you'd have a chance at a sensible debate. I don't see the point in you irksomely claiming that everyone else is irked, other than to divert attention away from the fact that you were wrong, and that you can't support your original assertion.

It's just turning into a slanging match that the mods such have nipped in the bud many posts ago.

Well then, stop the slanging and answer the questions.

 

[werewolf]

Can someone pleaes answer this question?
If a RGI repairs a faulty pcb and fits it back onto the boiler is he contravening any regulations?
Paul

 

[Softus]

If a RGI repairs a faulty pcb and fits it back onto the boiler is he contravening any regulations?

If the repair was carried out in accordance with manufacturer instructions, and/or guidance, and/or recommendations, then it could be argued that the repair is competent. If not, then it could be argued that the repair is incompetent, even if it appeared to cure the problem.

Being competent is a legal requirement - see the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 (SI 1998:2451).

 

[underwurlde]

That's none of your business.

You are making it my business by challenging my basic point that the 'PCB' inside my Baxi Boiler, in my view, shouldn't cost the manufacturer more than about a tenner to produce. I am qualified and have the experience to argue my point. Why should I even be listening to your arguments if you are unwilling to back your arguments up with any qualifications or experience in the matter? Why should I believe your statements? What are your statements based on? IMO, I don't think you know what you're talking about. Do you?

I'll bet you don't have any experience of design & manufacture, do you? I've been wasting my time talking to the average know-it-all mouthy idiot from down the bloody pub!

Because boiler PCBs incorporate important safety features

It just gets better & better. Please tell me, what are these 'important safety features' and why would it make a 'PCB' that would otherwise cost a tenner to make suddenly cost £120. All I saw on the 'PCB' in question was a bunch of mains relays, a handful of comparators and an EHT generator for the ignition. And I have already told you, the products that I design & that are currently in production DO have many 'important safety features' on them certainly do NOT cost that much to make - this is what I base my off-the-cuff knowledge on; there will of course be extra cost involved for designing in and testing such products, but I'd hazard a guess at no more than 5% of the cost of manufacturing the final product over the course of the life-span of the product, which is usually 5 years.

If you would just answer the questions that I first put to you, with sensible information, then you'd have a chance at a sensible debate

Are these the questions in question? (I've had to wade through reams of your childish insults & bullying to get to them):

If you ignore the cost of design, the cost of establishing a manufacturing plant, the cost of piloting a line, the rate of failures and scrap, the cost of shipping, assume that the production volume is large, and regard the cost of manufacture as being whatever it costs to buy the components and produce one board in a huge batch, then you're right. As an "engineer", do you consider your statement (that a board costs <= £10 to make) to be of any value, other than being for the purpose of you showing off (and rather unsuccessfully)?

Is that the best you can come up with? Pulling some obvious issues out of the air? You have not even given any of your points some real values for comparison. And why would simply stating that that PCB costs less than a tenner to make be showing off?

Manufacturing a PCB assembly doesn't cost as little as £10. Nowhere near.

Because boiler PCBs incorporate important safety features, and have to work reliably (although not all of them do), whereas most of the Tesco DVD players that cost £17.44 don't last as long as their warranty

So let me get this right.... You are saying that 'PCB's in DVD players CAN be made for less than a tenner. But PCB's inside boilers

(using a hell of a lot less components, no processor, no programming thereof, and an actual PCB that is far, far less advanced) have to cost more to make because 'boiler PCBs incorporate important safety features'?

Let’s face it, there is NO reason why a boiler 'PCB' should cost any more or less to make than the components found inside a DVD player.

If you ignore the cost of design, the cost of establishing a manufacturing plant, the cost of piloting a line, the rate of failures and scrap, the cost of shipping, assume that the production volume is large, and regard the cost of manufacture as being whatever it costs to buy the components and produce one board in a huge batch, then you're right

I have not ignored anything and neither has the producer of DVD players (or any other manufacturer for that matter of anything else). Getting down to the actual cost of a ‘PCB’ inside a DVD player so that it can be compared to the cost of a PCB inside a boiler (a poor comparison, granted) this will obviously NOT ignore any of the items listed in the above quote of yours:

The cost of a DVD off the shelf from poxy Tesco's @ £17.44 will ALSO include:
Poxy Tesco's mark-up.
Shipping.
Packaging, REMOTE CONTROL, instruction manual, POWER LEAD, PLUG
The DVD case, Facia, DVD transport, Power supply, assembly of these parts.
Take ALL of the cost of that stuff out and you are left with the actual cost of how much it will cost to make a 'PCB' without ignoring any of the above issues you’ve raised. What to do reckon now? Less than a tenner? Looks like it, doesn't it?

---

Now concentrating on the 'PCB' inside the boiler: It is actually manufactured by a company called Pektron, a company set up in 1964 with global sales of £28,000,000 with a workforce of 300 people. They have a 'state of the art manufacturing plant in Derby', using '4 universal automatic component insertion lines' and 'automated optical inspection'. Quite a sleek outfit, obviously completely geared up for cost effective production of 'PCB's.

So let's go back to your ‘questions’ yet again then -
'cost of design': Lets say it takes an Engineer 3 months to design this board - there is nothing complicated on that board at all. I'd put the cost of actual design of the control PCB at about £50,000 (I've purposefully hugely over inflated that price). This cost will be absolved in the volumes of boards produced. Let's take a conservative stab at about 25,000 units per annum, 5 year life span, that's about 125,000 units, therefore costs about 40p / unit to design. (actually I'd expect the volumes to be far higher than that).
'The cost of establishing a manufacturing plant': I had to laugh at this one. Pretty obvious that they would already exist, in this case since 1964. This won't be the only boards they manufacture, probably hundreds of others for many other customers, cost basically comes down to buying machine time on an assembly line. I'd guess that at these volumes Pektron probably make about 50p per board they flog to Baxi /

Potterton.
'the cost of shipping': Negligible. Light weight & small: Even if a box of 100 cost £5 to ship - that's only 5p each to ship.
'the cost of piloting a line'. Like the company literature states, automated assembly line. If it is any thing like my production lines I'd say it takes 5 minutes of actual labour to produce a PCB, test it and box it.
'the rate of failures and scrap': Negligible. We target this as being about 0.1% of production volumes. Mass producing PCBs is a very reliable process, especially if that process is automated as in this case it is. That's 1p per board to cover for the 1 in 1000 failures if each board 'costs as I’ve assumed, ‘a tenner'.
'assume that the production volume is large': I have not. 25K units PA, small to medium volumes.

Adding up then and based on my company overheads:
Materials: PCB (single sided, simple as it gets): 40p + other bits & bobs (there is NOTHING complicated on that board): £5.00 = £5.40
Materials O/H @ 6%: £0.32

Placement: 2p / component, say 50 components that's £1.00 for placement
Placement O/H @ 6%, that's £0.06

Labour @ 5mins, that's 5 x £0.3926 = £1.96

Things I've mentioned above, call them overheads: 0.40+0.50+0.05+0.01 = £0.96

Grand total: (£5.40+£0.32) + (£1.00+£0.06) + (£1.96) + (£0.96) = £9.70

OK, I guessed off the top my head, based on years of experience making this kind of thing, that to make such a simple, single sided PCB populated with off the shelf THP components shouldn't cost any more than a tenner. OK, you can nit-pik at certain costs there if you want (and no doubt you will just to prove your argument), but the order of cost will still be in that ball park and certainly will NOT be anywhere like the £120 I was quoted (TRADE PRICE I HASTEN TO ADD) for a replacement.

 

[Nixt]

The price of many gas spares today rarely reflects their cost and is more to do with the fact that for many manufacturers it represents the only meaningful profit they are likely to make. This is because domestic gas boilers are built down to a low price, fuelled mainly by market forces. In other words the price people are prepared to pay for gas-fired central heating.

Any comparison made to material costs in the 70's & 80's will show that gas boilers are cheaper than ever whilst the cost of motoring for example has sky-rocketed. True there are items such as white goods that have suffered a similar fate though they attract as much criticism for longevity as gas boilers.

Domestic gas boiler sales are estimated to fall by 11% this year and if so parts business will become key in a overcrowded market for new appliances. The OP may be correct in the assumption that parts seem overpriced in relation to their true cost however the manufacturers who tried the quality product with cheap replacement parts approach all failed.

Indeed even the so called 'quality end' makes use brand strength and huge 'in-warranty' after-sales teams rather than quality components to maintain a premium price.

 

[Softus]

£9.70

+ VAT, of course.

 

[corgiman]

Sheesh

this thread has to have been made by ariston

its just goes on and on and on and one

etc and so forth

 

[Agile]

Nixt has explained why boiler parts cost us £120 to buy when the OEM supply was only £20 ( being realistic rather than £10. That EHT transformer and the relays are expensive. )

I will explain why RGIs should not fit repaired parts.

RGIs are governed by the GSUR regulations which includes a proviso that we can only fit parts specifically designed for use with gas. The manufacturer of a gas appliance provides parts to repair their boilers as "manufacturer's parts".

Any parts we fit which are not supplied by the manufacturer are NOT approved by the manufacturer. We therefore cannot legally fit them under the GSUR.

If I replace a relay on a boiler PCB then my repair is not "approved by the manufacturer". This is not because I have done it badly but because he is losing £100 of profit. However much I demonstrate that I am competent to repair PCBs the manufacturer will never approve a repair I have done because of their commercial restraints.

Tony

 

[Softus]

I will explain why RGIs should not fit repaired parts.

I'd already done that.

However much I demonstrate that I am competent to repair PCBs the manufacturer will never approve a repair I have done because of their commercial restraints.

Actually, even if the commercial constraint didn't exist, I believe that the manufacturer wouldn't approve a PCB repair, so the commercial aspect is irrelevant.

This also means that repairing a PCB, even competently, doesn't constitute a competent boiler repair, simply because it isn't a method approved by the manufacturer.