14 hours ago, BruceMcF said:
Bad habit as an economist ... when I say cost, I mean the cost to the seller to bring it to market, not the price to the buyer.
What would blow out supply cost would be providing full technical support for a kit build. That would definitely cost more to bring to market and support.
However, there is a strong perception among people that there is a big cost reduction in bringing a full parts kit to the market, for a project of this scale ... not mass production but not small batch production either.
I am guessing that is based an imagining the extra build cost and not for a minute imagining the extra stocking costs of a full parts kit... plus extra packaging cost and greater risk of damage in shipment (bent pins are why they ship Arduino Shields with pin headers to solder on, not build cost).
At the likely scale of this project, the build overheads will not be as high as people think when they are used to small runs.
I'm not saying anything has been said that the PRICE would be higher, just that the full cost to bring a complete parts kit to market and to bring an assembled board to market would not be as far apart as a lot of people imagine ... and it's up in the air which one would be the lower supply cost.
If there's a kit version, I expect each chip and component will come individually boxed and labeled, because that's obviously the least expensive path, since they don't even have unbox any of the components before shipping! ?
No, really, if I order a kit in addition to a fully assembled version, I'd be happy as long as it doesn't arrive as a single ziplock bag of assorted parts... like a certain other homebrew computer project that was once mentioned, long ago. I really liked the idea from the Mini PET, of placing each component in approximately the correct position on a sheet of foam. But I imagine that adds even more cost than full assembly... unless machine pickers can already do it. ?