A Competitive Advantage Through Smarter Purchasing

For SEMs and semiconductor manufacturers alike, fixed costs represent a far greater portion of per-unit production cost than materials than it does in other businesses. Clean-room environments and gas delivery systems are expensive to build and maintain while substrate, tubes, and crystals are relatively inexpensive on a per-unit basis. Thus, margin expansion for users of the sophisticated orbital welding equipment is highly dependent on controlling fixed costs. Since process welding demands a certain uniformity in plant design and production process, it is difficult if not inadvisable (for safety reasons) for producers to trade-down to less apt and safe designs and equipment.

Used welding equipment, however, offers users with high production standards the opportunity to significantly cut per-unit fixed costs and expand  margins. Used equipment – weld heads, gas cabinets, arc machines, etc – have the obvious advantage of being cheaper. But how can a buyer of used equipment feel sure about its safety and reliability in an environment that demands perfect reliability to guarantee the quality of hi-tech components and the safety of employees and equipment?

Buying used equipment from most sources is a crap shoot, especially if it is from the primary user. Inadequate maintenance may not manifest any immediate threats to safety or reliability, but depreciation can ultimately reveal itself at the worst of times – in production – to the secondary user. It is therefore advisable for buyers of used welding equipment to seek out equipment that has been maintained and/or repaired to new spec by the same maintenance, repair, and re-manufacturing expert. This will provide assurances for quality and safety in a few ways. In the case of equipment that has been maintained by a welding systems repair specialist, there is an assurance of quality and safety that comes with knowing that the equipment has essentially always been kept in like-new condition, and will continue to be kept in that condition through a guarantee to buyers or through additional value-added maintenance services. And in the case of repair or re-manufacturing, there is the promise of quality and safety that comes from using a trusted specialist in the business to make a piece of used equipment like-new: good reputations for repair and re-manufacturing speak volumes in a business where there is no room for error or deviation from spec.

Don’t let the cost of brand-new welding equipment eat away all of your profits. Look into purchasing used welding equipment at a fraction of the price. Manufacturers can expand margins without cutting the corners of safety and reliability that distinguish process welding operations from other, less complex ones.