your forgetting some things,
the guy who designed its cost…
the cost of the machines to machine it
the guy who machines its cost,
the guy who packages its cost
the packaging cost
The cost to make the steel axle,
etc…etc…
it adds up! additional to that is price verses demand! i hate to say it but us unicyclists arent overbuying the bmxers on profile hubs, so of course its going to be expensive! You want to get a cheaper hub, wait till the demand for profile hubs goes up, then the cost will come down! good luck. Or, dont do trials or muni, and buy a cheap hub!
I wish i could pick up a lump of al and make a precisely machined hub that stands up to the shit a profile can take, but i cant, so i leave it too the experts!
The cost of materials for an item (unicycle parts in this case) is peanuts compared to the cost of labor to build the item. I have a perfect example with my 29er prototype. Have a look at it then look at my material cost breakdown. You can see photos here:
I fabricated the frame from 6061 aluminum and the hub from 17-4ph stainless steel - a very expensive heat treateable stainless steel. Here’s the material costs in US dollars:
seat tube - $1.26
Fork crown - $1.93
fork blades - $6.40 for both (3.20 ea.)
axle - $5.30
hub flanges - free (scrap from behind the shear)
So the 29er frame and axle cost me $14.89 !
I spent about 9 hours building the frame and hub - my shop rate is $40/hour - so the cost of labor would $360.00 if I built these parts on shop time. Naturally I did the work myself on my own time. Anodizing the aluminum parts would cost around $15.00.
A human being can be made from about 2 UKP worth of
soot, water, fertilizer and other bits and bobs. I’ve never
understood why more parents don’t go down this route.
Sure, sex is fun and pregnancy gets you time off work, but
think of the money you’d save on nappies (US = daipers) and
clothes if you just boiled up a kid aged 5 or so. Personally
I think the nappy manufacturers have been keeping this quiet
in order to maximise their staggering profits…
Do you ask the same questions about the cost of your
consumer electronics? I hope you know that a CPU costing
£££ is made of a minute fraction of a gram of silicon. I
mean!! That’s what sand is made of - how expensive can it
be?..
BTW aluminim is not an alloy but a metallic element.