Looks like Heathkit is coming back

More... There are two entities; Heathkit Vintage LLC and Heath Company. Both are located at: 1336 Brommer St, Suite A3 Santa Cruz, CA 95062

Google map:

Mailing address: PO Box 3115 Santa Cruz, CA 95063

Corporate filings:

Both are owned by Andrew S. Cromarty (N6JLJ).

Heathkit company history:

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

On Sat, 10 Oct 2015 08:29:52 -0700, Jeff Liebermann Gave us:

Funny "Heathkit" was bought by Schlumberger years ago and they are out of Saint Joseph, MI

They are now in Santa Cruz?

Yep. Apparently they are now located in my "backyard".

Heathkit has been sold and acquired many times since they were located in St Joseph, MI. Heathkit company history:

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

There are still interesting things. Integration isn't a problem, plenty can still be made. What's changed is that diy stuff is now more cost & the culture has swung further away from engineering.

I doubt it. Not enough customers.

really? If you follow the instructions, sure. I built a reaction set on card & springs. Pull the components off and you can build loads more. So a good young kid's option.

Yup, they're sold. But it's very different stuff to the old heathkits.

NT

I thought I had heard this a couple years ago. So I Googled, "Heathkit's coming back". I didn't go very deep but I see a reference on Aug 6, 2013. >

"I don?t very often splurge on an exclamation point in an article title. They seem excessive and overexcited to me. But this is news that deserves one:"

Ya, right.

Ah, something was stirring, May 28, 2013.

Oh, Sept 8, 2011

"IEEE Times reports that Heathkit, the fabled electronics kits company, is going back into that business after a two-decade hiatus. The Heathkit website says that they will be releasing Garage Parking Assistant kit (GPA-100) in late September followed by a Wireless Swimming Pool Monitor kit. Amateur radio kits may be coming by the end of the year."

It seems you guys will be LENR believers before you buy a Heathkit!

Mikek :-)

A "Garage Parking Assistant" could be interesting. But what year? ;-)

LENR, maybe. AGW, never!

I believe that is the point of the duties, to keep out foreign goods.

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Rick

Like?

Kits were never really cost competitive. Of course, with manufacturing techniques today the difference is more pronounced. However, few chips even come in DIP packages anymore so DIY has become almost impossible.

Perhaps but no suppliers also means no market. It takes two.

Really! It's not the instructions, rather the tedium and reliability.

Well, I wouldn't expect VTVMs to sell very well today.

On Sun, 11 Oct 2015 09:14:26 -0400, krw Gave us:

There is a market for small convert-to-DIP daughterboards for smt and bga packages that makes things still doable, but lead lengths start becoming a factor at some point.

This is why R-Pi has become so popular.. It is cheap, and getting from point a to point b is a lot easier.

Of course what gets learned is a bit less, unless the parent/mentor gets real in-depth with the person being mentored.

But of course you'll come back saying that I am wrong again.

Good luck with that.

DYIers aren't likely going to solder .5mm, or less, parts which are the mainstay of the business.

You're AlwaysWrong.

Years ago, I helped brainstorm a product that was suppose to become a kit. The board was mostly SMD parts, which created a problem for hand soldering methods. Instead, the board was pre-screen with solder paste and coated with flux. Components were attached with a dot of hot melt glue or screened on adhesive. Once the parts were stuck in place by the adhesive dot, the solder paste was reflowed by the hot air soldering pencil. I designed and built the prototype of a hot air soldering pencil. Placement accuracy was not critical because the parts would self-center themselves once the solder paste reflowed.

Oddly, those that knew how to solder had the most difficulties using the hot air soldering pencil. Those that had never soldered anything previously, had the most problems. There were a few tricks, like using a toothpick to hold a part in place while it was being reflow soldered that required some practice. My soldering pencil also had problems due to localized over-heating, isolating the heat from the electronics, weight distribution, etc. It was decided that a conventional SMD reflow workstation was a better choice and the hot air pencil idea was abandoned.

A few tests of the kits were attempted by both experienced and beginning builders. Both had problems with handling, losing, dropping, and mixing up parts. Supplying all parts on a tape was a big help, but handling was still problematic. Sticking or gluing the parts temporarily to the PCB worked well for passives, but had a problem with IC's. The glue was selected so that it would volatize at about the same time that the solder would reflow. Surface tension of the solder would hold the part in place. However, for IC's, the distance between the leads and the glue was larger, causing a temperature lag. The solder would reflow first, and then the glue would volatize, causing the solder to spray all over the PCB.

If I had to do it over today, I would have done things much the same way. I think it's possible to produce do it thyself SMD kit products. However, I don't think it will happen because the cost of robotic PCB assembly is so much cheaper than kiting and packaging the individual parts, that the kit version will cost far more than the assembled unit.

Where kits are being done successfully are with a mechanical assembly kit and pre-soldered PCB's. The builder simply assembles the package, aligns the electronics, and tests the result. For example Elecraft does that in it's K3 series of radios: There's no soldering required to build the radio.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Lightbeam communicators, flame valve radio, make your own speaker, geiger counter, nipkov/baird tv, silliness meter, etc etc

opamps still come in DIP, that's enough for lots of projects

Tedium applies when you do it the instructions way. I always wondered why they wasted time/money fitting the components.

funny

NT

Good luck making money with any of those.

No, the tedium comes in when you have to figure out why the circuit doesn't do what it was supposed to - tracing down all the broken wires and bent springs. No, it's no fun at all.

Let's try a bit of marketing research here. Suppose the new Heath company would arrange to clone some of their old kits, but due to unavailability, with more modern components. For example, I have an Heath GC-1000 WWV receiver that is quite unique and are still selling used for high prices: The updated kit would use a modern processor and hopefully some better designed mechanical construction, but otherwise would be much the same as the original. Is there a market for clones of 30+ year old technology? I really don't know. If priced reasonably, I would certainly be interested in updated versions of some of the Heathkit toys that I've accumulated over the years.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Someone is making money selling televisor kits. I don't remember who it was & google is unhelpful. Small kids love silliness meters. Etc.

I don't recall experiencing either of those problems. Engineers are the ones that persist in trying to fix it. I did plenty of that as a kid.

NT

I doubt I'd buy new clones of anything. I'd far rather have the original: proven reliability, proven quality, more character, less dollars.

NT

Nope. It annoyed me too much. I learned how to solder instead. The friends who had those lousy kits went no further than boredom.

Technically qualified people are not a good target market for educational kits. However, would you buy a kit for a kid that wants to learn something about electronics (i.e. giftware)?

Argh. I've been dealing with Heathkits for most of my life. My guess(tm) is that I have about 20 assorted boxes in the house with Heathkit on the nameplate. I worked for the Los Angeles store one summer when in high skool. In my never humble opinion, the designs were adequate but sometimes problematic[1], the quality is barely tolerable on some components, and the products are only economomical if you don't consider the value of your time. They're an educational experience, where you get to keep the results of your efforts.

[1] My favorite was the aircraft band receiver GR-98. When I was moving boxes around for Heathkit, we discovered that the AGC worked backwards. The stronger the signal, the louder the audio. When we called Benton Harbor to point out the error, they initially didn't believe us.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Kids have an aversion to following detailed instructions. Most would rather figure things out for themselves. Those who were forced to follow the instructions probably did get bored. I was one of those kids that just wouldn't follow instructions. I must confess that I did have to do a few things over several times, and did have to occasionally glance at the instructions (when nobody was watching). The exercise was not to build something useful, but rather to treat it as a puzzle problem and figure out how to put it together. The pride in doing it all myself, without ANY assistance, was my main interest.

Incidentally, I still do things much the same way today. Disassembling snap together laptops, LCD monitors, and some printers is not easy or obvious. Few manufacturers provide disassembly instructions. So, I just dive in and try various tricks. When I'm rushed, tired, or stumped, I can usually find a YouTube video or iFixit pages that show how it's done. iFixit is great, but the bad actors on YouTube can really be tedious and boring.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558