The boards JJP are using are very likely being made in quite a large facility with automatic machinery and from my experience (once the blank PCBs are made) it is pretty simple to assemble several thousand a day as a very minimum.
It does take a huge amount of time to design the circuit, layout the board, have prototypes made (then probably hand assembled for 10 pcs) then debug, find faults and do this all over again. I can't see how driver boards are that complicated to begin with though??? Remember JJP are lkely to be using standard (off the shelf) computer mainboards and maybe this is where the REAL problem is - they get driver boards finished and then the mainboard goes obsolete before they can actually get anythng into production - this would make perfect sense to me.
Sorry, but to me - if I was spending millions on PCBs - I would have tighter control of this situation, but that's just me.
Jacks story doesn't really ring true to me.
He lost me when he started taking deposits on a second machine without ever having delivered the first - too dodgy to me. I don't care how good WOZ is/might be - it is just outright shifty businesss practice given the stupidly long delays with WOZ.
Given the deposits JJP has I would be shipping machines both built and kits from PRC within six months - no excuses and no bullshit about problems with manufacturing in USA.
What I should have asked is Mike(Homepin) how many boards should be able to get made on a daily basis if you had put in a 1.6 million dollar order as Jack said, given the board making place had several staff.
Is this a slow process because of labour, or a slow process in not having enough machines to make the boards ?
How many could a chineese firm make a day I wonder ?? .........singles arriving daily seems very small numbers to me ?