EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Spare Parts cost of speakers for blick pagers

Hi, after receiving a spares price list from blick I was appalled at the cost of the replacement speakers for the aquarius brand pagers, they expect the NHS to pay £20 a speaker!!!They say they have been under charging for some years. After looking around suppliers I have found a company that may be able to supply the speakers (alot cheaper), the company name is jk components. These speakers are the same as the ones provided by blick(made by keyrin) minus the wires. So save your trust some money and time try this company

One definition of an engineer that I particularly like is someone who can do for £ 1 what any damn fool can do for ten! There’s always a cheaper way, if anyone is bothered to try, or look. If there was a bit more “make do and mend” in the UK NHS, then perhaps we could avoid these perennial funding crises!

Beechy,

1). Is it worth repairing pagers that are out of warranty? i.e. is it worth anyones' time, effort or money to source any spares whatever their cost - for such "throwaway" devices? 2). Are the skills of EBME engineers or "Medical Electronics Engineers" best utilised for this purpose? Just a couple of thought-provoking questions to add to Geoff's.

"Throwaway Devices" !!!!??? Yeah right! most hospital pagers I have come across are not at a throwaway price ! I will try that company suggested as the speakers in the Aquarius range are very similar to the ones Mtone use.

Do you have a web address for JK ?

Looks like there are other Medical Engineering departments out there maintaining pager systems.....So, after warranty (i.e. the period during which you wouldn't expect to have to repair faults) expires , pagers have enough residual value to make it worthwhile for EBME departments to maintain them? What are we talking, purchase price-wise, for pagers with/without one-way/two-way audible messaging and what's the typical warranty period then? Are all types of pagers are worth maintaining? - beyond warranty; i.e. pagers of 1, 2, 3 years old?

All hospitals where I worked have all repaired thier own pagers, or used a third party to do them. Unit cost is high as one place found out when a nice two-way sp pager got dropped in the loo !

Normally its just things like clips, speaker, display etc or then it tends to be big like introduced to water !

Pagers are around 300 for a one way on-site unit.

Hi andyj81 the web address is www.jkcomponents.co.uk, however you have to phone them as the parts are not on their site. If people who are involved in pager repairs ordered their speakers from there we may get a very good price(economies of scale)

Hi Beechy
Further to your posting I used to repair Blick pagers for years but gladly not anymore. I found the main problem was the speaker cone coming away from the chasis, to remedy this problem I used to glue the speakers in place with either hot melt glue or bostic type, as well as the foam rubber sticky pad thereby reducing the failure rate by 10 fold. Sounders are available from Farnell I think just check the audio output frequency.

Richard you know what happens in the NHS to justify an engineer you need to impress the bean counters by taking on something extra, pagers has always been one of those cost savings.