12:00 – I’m still cranking away on the final lab session, which I should finish up today or tomorrow.
Barbara disassembled 600 15 mL dropper bottles yesterday, which means unscrewing and removing the cap and then pulling the dropper tip plug. That’s a lot of work that wouldn’t be necessary if our supplier shipped those bottles already disassembled. These are Chinese-made bottles, and the supplier says they’re shipped that way to save shipping costs. I suggested that since bottles must be disassembled to fill them, they might want to package the bottles, caps, and dropper tips separately, even if that raised the price a bit.
Before I ordered these bottles, I seriously considered buying the equivalent bottles from one of my other suppliers. Those bottles are US-made and cost about 25% more than the Chinese bottles. Although the cost of bottles is not an insignificant percentage of component costs, the extra cost of the US-made bottles wasn’t really the deciding factor. Other than having to disassemble them, I actually prefer the Chinese bottles. The body of their dropper tips is about two or three times longer than the body of the US-made dropper tips. The Chinese tips are a tight friction fit in the mouth of the bottle, while the much shorter US tips are a snap fit. To me, the Chinese tips seem more secure. I’m afraid that if I use the US bottles someone will squeeze a bottle too enthusiastically and pop out the dropper tip. That wouldn’t be good, particularly if the bottle contained a concentrated acid, strong ammonia, or a similar chemical. So for now I’m sticking with the Chinese bottles and hoping I can convince my supplier to package the bottles, caps, and tips separately.