To be clear I'm not even asking for you to account for the cost of your printer, the 3d scanner, and software licenses in your math. Let's assume that all those are free. How many hours of specialized human time was spent on consultations, scans, design, reviews, to produce working guards for you?
The next question is then, of course, how much do they charge for subsequent guards now that the scan has been done and validated? Is it still 4000x the cost of raw resin?
I'm sure labor is involved, and maybe it's a lot, but it still seems like an awful lot of money for a piece of plastic.
First time?
Price is not determined by cost to produce.
It’s determined by the price a customer is willing to pay.
Sometimes the entrenched default that collects an inertial premium doesn't get disrupted...
But, yes, anyone without a moat who operates with a presumption of retention runs the risk of being knocked off of their perch; their fate left to others.
Since I do have the 3D scan of my teeth, I've debated designing my own, but I'm not sure which resins to buy that I could safely put in my mouth every night.
Might there be microscopic layer lines? Or other unknowns you're not familiar with? Making 3d prints that can be cleaned is non-trivial, maybe there is a surface finish involved, etc.
Also how do you know your design is correct? Won't cause your teeth to move? A 3d scan doesn't mean you know what a mouth guard should look like.
All of a sudden, having a product that's made with a vetted process is pretty attractive -- and 600 USD seems like a bargain.
What's the cost of having your teeth fixed, if they accidentally move? (Not to mention the discomfort, which can be considerable)
That doesn't really change the fact that it feels kind of viscerally wrong to pay $600 to pay for two glorified pieces of plastic, and a part of me still does feel I could clone it competently. I haven't bothered for the aforementioned safe resin, and also because I already have it and I have enough money to just eat the cost and complain about it.
Well that's pretty close to how much the entire CPAP system would cost depending on the sale.
I think there's a deceptively low amount of engineering required for most medical and medical-adjacent tech. The high costs are rooted in pervasive industry-wide centuries-long FUD campaigns.
That dastardly Ben Franklin with his bifocals..
I agree the plastics might be bad for me, but I justify it because I suspect that just continuing with the apnea is almost certainly worse for me, considering how many diseases appear to be caused by it.