audio2design
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Sounds like what I was going on about.
Hand assembly makes sense for small batches, even though its costly Only when the numbers get large are you able to use fully automated assembly and get a large reduction in per unit cost. It's the overhead with the latter that you need to balance out with volume, is what I was saying.
For SMT hand placement makes sense but hand soldering never does for something delivered to a customer they are paying for. Paste screens and prototype ovens are cheap.
If you value your time and place value on the cost and reputation of returns then proper assembly becomes more cost effective at a very low volume. The $100K number had no basis in reality