Comment by stronglikedan
20 hours ago
The thing is that I can get just as good if not better ones (metal) for $7 all day long, and not have to spend time sourcing and assembling materials, and I don't even have to leave my house to do it.
20 hours ago
The thing is that I can get just as good if not better ones (metal) for $7 all day long, and not have to spend time sourcing and assembling materials, and I don't even have to leave my house to do it.
When my kids were little they had a toy doctors set and the fake wooden stethoscope broke; replacing it with a real one was significantly cheaper than paying Melissa and Doug for a new one.
Hat tip. I never heard of "Melissa and Doug" before this post. I found the doctor's kit here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Melissa-Doug-Doctors-Original-Pieces/...
It is adorable!
They make a bunch of “old style” toys and some are quite nice, but some start getting toward the “just buy the kids the real thing” pricing.
Respectfully, as this is HN, I do not believe that is the purpose of the posted Github repository.
I'm not sure what you are buying, but it wouldn't surprise me if they were done in a factory that does medical grade quality control. While the odds are a medical problem from a non-medical grade stethoscope seem low, it still seems a couple bucks is worth the price. (if we are talking thousands I'd ask for a deeper drive into what that really gets you)
How much do you think doctor's spend on their stethoscope when they live in a developing country? My guess: About 10 USD. Think about the global demand for stethoscopes for countries where GDP per capita is below 4000 USD. It must be enormous.
From my experience in manufacturing engineering, if they retail for $7, the cost of goods sold is somewhere between $2.5 and $5.
The thing is that even if you do that, you still haven't made your own stethoscope, which this post is all about.