Why do they expect it to be so expensive? ("It is definitely not cheap to make one of these. We are currently estimating the cost at between $2k - $4k.")
With 4769 components on the board, that would suggest a cost per component of over 40 cents. Looking at JLCPCB prices for SMD assembly and components, I would have expected an order of magnitude less.
don't forget assembly costs. very few boards have such a large number of components, and they tend to be big and expensive server boards...
larger boards are also more difficult to work with in general. JLCPCB plays a few tricks to keep the costs down on the smaller boards, but once you go past certain limits, the price goes up significantly.
I did consider assembly cost, that's why I was confused.
Specifically JLCPCB claims "$0.0017 per joint" for PCB assembly, which would be around 10k joints for the transistors, and another 5k for the resistors, LEDs and other parts, so around $25 + the parts cost.
Some other PCB manufacturer (edit: PCBway) I checked also didn't seem to charge more than a few hundred per fully populated board (for the board + assembly).
It's of course possible that that JLCPCB pricing goes way up with such parts counts, but the other manufacturer did ask for count + size before producing the automatic quote.
Edit: Didn't realize you were the project author - thanks for the response! I guess that's what hides behind "Final price is subject to our review" then. Still, looking forward to seeing this in person
from https://monster6502.com/ : "the cost is actually dominated by the component and assembly costs of an extremely large number of tiny components, each of which is individually quite inexpensive. "
I saw that, but that doesn't line up with the prices I saw, that's why I was confused. As I said, it'd imply over 40 cents (for part + assembly) per component.
Most of the components are leds and transistors (and some resistors) and those are (still) dirt cheap... you can get whole microcontrollers for ~3 cents a piece [0] (if you buy a few thousands). PCBs are comparatively cheap, few tens of dollars, depending on the process, and with pick-and-place, assembly is also relatively cheap.
so yeah.. maybe they're making them in some more expensive country or use some exotic components.
I have wondered the same but I think SMD wasn’t as cheap a decade ago as it is today for one-off designs. I wonder what a modern day jlc version would cost.
With 4769 components on the board, that would suggest a cost per component of over 40 cents. Looking at JLCPCB prices for SMD assembly and components, I would have expected an order of magnitude less.