Given that you apparently haven't yet succeeded in getting your BC into production I'm curious as to your sources concerning the relative costs of production.
As a current producer of wings, (16 models and counting) I have a front row seat for what is actually involved.
Most bc's sold today are "single Layer" meaning two sheets of textiles with a thin layer of urethane glued to the inner surface are RF welded together. There is no inner bladder in virtually all conventional BC's on the market today. Single layer inflatables can easily be identified by the "edge tape" sewn around the perimeter. It's like a piece of ribbon ~1 " or so wide folded over the unfinished edge of the main material that exists beyond the area of the weld.
Most wings OTOH consist of a sew outer shell with a separate inner bladder. The inner bladder may be a straight urethane film (DSS uses a custom made 30 mil urethane film), or a 200-400 denier textile with a thin layer of urethane laminated with adhesive.
Unlike a conventional BC a wing requires cutting and sewing of the "shell" usually about 10 individual pieces, and cutting and welding of the bladder.
Unlike a conventional BC a wing requires the assembly of the bladder to the shell. When the rf welder platten rises on a typical jacket BC it's nearly completed, not so for most wings.
Wings are also typically produced in much smaller volumes than BC's making some economies of scale available to the producers of conventional BC's impractical for wings. Rotary tables for RF welding, and automated cutting and trimming are common in the production of BC's and are essentially unknown in the production of most wings.
Tobin
No I have not succeeded to have my BC manufactured yet. I have declined two offers so far and 2 companies declined to build it for me. I'm only doing it on the side and have actively been talking to people for 6 month or so. I wasn't expecting it to go faster because I'm not delusional.
Your way of argueing is very dishonest. You never actually answer anything, you just
claim I said something and argue against that. That's what politicians do.
What's the point in comparing a single shell jacket to a wing? Oh, right, so you can make your argument. Yet again, you're spinning what I said so you have something you can argue about.
First of all, I have sources and prices for all materials directly from the manufacturers. All kinds of cordura and PU film and webbing are manufactured here in Germany, so all I had to do is call them and have them send me a quote for different quatities. The manufacturer here doesn't glue the PU onto the nylon. They use PU granulate and melt or 'bake' in onto the fabric, so no glue.
The better jackets do use an inner PU bladder. If you look at jackets like the Master by SB. The elctrode or die or whatever you wanna call it, for a wing is less expensive than for a Master type jacket. The Master jacket also needs more man-hour to make. Sewing in zipper cost money, sewing the webbing onto the outer bag cost money, sewing in the pockets costs money and so on. Stuff you don't have to do for your wings. Saving these steps decreses the manufacturing cost significantly. Depending on where you make it, the labour/hours is what costs the most money. I know, you claim stuff like the electrode is oh so expensive, yet, if I would have it made in Germany it's less than 3 grand. You can decuct this AND if you were to sell only 300 rigs in 5 years it's 10 dollars per stock unit. Tooling for other products were you need different molds and such are WAY more expensive to make than a few thousend dollars. With molds you might even have to make more than one to get it right. Even small manufacturers like you should be selling more than 300 in 5 years though, hence, the actual cost are lower. The machine work you either source out, or you do enough volume to so outsourcing of the metalwork and such is cheaper to do inhouse. On the other hand, one hour of labour (average of welding and sewing) here in Germany cost me between 75-90 dollars!
Compared to this, materials are pretty cheap, doesn't matter how thick the film is, it's still a tiny portion of the total cost.
Now, spin what I said, as you always do.