Factors affecting velostat price

Factors affecting Velostat price and other volume conductive film

Cus­tomers always want to know “Can I get this LINQSTAT Vol­ume Con­duc­tive Film (a 3M Velo­stat* Alter­na­tive) any cheap­er?” At first glance it seems like a sales­man­’s worst night­mare, but when you turn the ques­tion to the process engi­neer­ing team with­in the pro­duc­tion depart­ment, you get a whole dif­fer­ent reac­tion. So whether you are using our LINQSTAT mate­r­i­al, or Velo­stat — here are tips on get­ting a bet­ter Velo­stat price.

You sure can!” is the reply I got recent­ly from a process engi­neer. Upon fur­ther dis­cus­sion, he gave me some tips that I have includ­ed here as a guide­lines. Hope­ful­ly they serve oth­ers as well as they have served me.

It turns out that the price of the LINQSTAT vol­ume con­duc­tive film are heav­i­ly influ­enced by two spe­cif­ic attrib­ut­es of the roll and there is one attribute that has mar­gin­al effect on the prod­uct cost. These three ele­ments are as follows:

  1. The thick­ness of the roll
  2. The length of the roll and
  3. The width of the roll (ie. the slit­ting of the rolls)

LINQSTAT or Velostat Price is Affected by Roll Thickness

The most pop­u­lar thick­ness for the rolls of vol­ume con­duc­tive film is 4mil (102µm), but this nor­mal­ly makes it only the most read­i­ly avail­able, not nec­es­sar­i­ly the cheap­est. 2 mil (50µm) and 3mil (76µm) film thick­ness­es are also pos­si­ble, and since the prod­uct (and the ship­ping costs) are depen­dent on the amount of mate­r­i­al used, 2mil and 3mil will be cheap­er than the 4 mil.

Though you will need to con­tact us for an actu­al quo­ta­tion, a close approx­i­ma­tion is that the 3mil thick LINQSTAT will be about 10% cheap­er than the 4mil thick ver­sion and the 2 mil is about 15% cheap­er than the 4mil thick version.

Yes, some of the prop­er­ties will vary depend­ing on the thick­ness used, but if you can test a thin­ner ver­sion and it works for you, then start enjoy­ing the savings.

LINQSTAT or Velostat Price is Affected by Roll Length

The load­ing and unload­ing of the rolls is a man­u­al process, but once the machine is run­ning, there are very few extra costs asso­ci­at­ed and the dis­counts that CAPLINQ gets from this can be passed on direct­ly to the customer.

Assum­ing you need to have 150′ (46m) lengths, you will pay a pre­mi­um to have them deliv­ered in such (rel­a­tive­ly) short lengths. In widths wider than a cou­ple inch­es, these rolls can also be sup­plied in lengths up to 1500’ (457m). Grant­ed that these lengths can be more cum­ber­some to han­dle, but if the oper­a­tors and machines can han­dle it, why not take the savings.

To give you an idea, (though again you should con­tact a sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive for an offi­cial quo­ta­tion), a 1500’ roll is about 35% cheap­er than a 150′ roll of the same prod­uct. Ele­ments to con­sid­er for this are the load­ing and unload­ing of the rolls, the indi­vid­ual cores need­ed for each roll (and end caps) and indi­vid­ual pack­ag­ing of the rolls in sta­t­ic-free bags.

Example for rolls of 9″ wide (229mm) x 0.004″ (102µm) thick Linqstat

To give you a bet­ter idea of what we’re talk­ing about let me give you an exam­ple to show you the differences:

LINQSTAT VCF Roll Dimen­sions 9” (229mm) Wide X 0.004” (102µm) Thick
Roll Length Roll Diam­e­ter Roll Weight Approx. Sav­ings
150′ (45.7m) 4.5″ (108 mm) 4 lbs (1.6 kgs) 0%
750′ (229m) 7.5″ (191 mm) 15 lbs (6.8 kgs) 15%
1500’ (457m) 10″ (254 mm) 28 lbs (12.7 kgs) 35%

Of course, if 1500’ is not pos­si­ble, you can go short­er (750′, 500′ or even 250′) and there will be a lit­tle sav­ings in each roll length longer than the orig­i­nal 150′.

LINQSTAT or Velostat Price is Affected by Roll Width (ie. the slitting of the rolls)

As it turns out, there is very lit­tle effect on pric­ing if the roll widths are longer or short­er. The slit­ting time is rel­a­tive­ly short and does not play a large roll in deter­min­ing the final prod­uct price.

* 3M is a reg­is­tered trade­mark of 3M Cor­po­ra­tion. Velo­stat is a trade­mark of 3M Cor­po­ra­tion. Nei­ther is affil­i­at­ed with this site.

CAPLINQ is a spe­cial­ty plas­tics sup­pli­er offer­ing a range of con­duc­tive mate­ri­als includ­ing our broad range of elec­tri­cal­ly con­duc­tive plas­tics and anti­sta­t­ic tapes and films. If you have any ques­tions, please don’t hes­i­tate to con­tact us to find out how we can help you with oth­er fac­tors that may affect the Velo­stat price.

About Chris Perabo

Chris is an energetic and enthusiastic engineer and entrepreneur. He is always interested in taking highly technical subjects and distilling these to their essence so that even the layman can understand. He loves to get into the technical details of an issue and then understand how it can be useful for specific customers and applications. Chris is currently the Director of Business Development at CAPLINQ.

2 thoughts on “Factors affecting Velostat price and other volume conductive film

  1. we are look­ing for alter­na­tive to 3m Velo­stat Prod­uct 1704, Elec­tri­cal­ly con­duc­tive film, for use in explo­sive man­u­fac­tur­ing of Sol­id Propellant;
    Kind­ly sug­gest a euqi­va­lent prod­uct from Lin­q­S­tat and also send catalogue/test cer­tifi­cates of the product

  2. Lin­q­s­tat is very often used as an alter­na­tive to Velo­stat prod­ucts. Lin­q­s­tat has a sim­i­lar com­po­si­tion and pro­vides sim­i­lar con­duc­tive qual­i­ties. We do not have an exact replace­ment for the Velo­stat 1704, but depend­ing on your spe­cif­ic require­ments I can sug­gest the best alter­na­tive. For basic comparison:
    Sim­i­lar in vol­ume con­duc­tiv­i­ty: MVCF-8S50K-Series
    Sim­i­lar in sur­face resis­tiv­i­ty: MVCF-4S50K-Series

    If you want to know the best alter­na­tive for your appli­ca­tion please send us an email with more details.

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