Quote Originally Posted by slicksteel View Post
It would be interesting to actually learn what type of profit off each machine, makers of autocad produced tattoo machiness make.
What a lot of people do not understand is that the "Autocad" produced machine builders either have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in machinery, tooling, software and R&D. If not then they are paying somebody else that does $100+/hour to design and or produce these machines for them. These costs all have to trickle down to some effect into the final product. Production builders get better pricing on items because they buy in bulk but that to is money invested that sits on a shelf doing nothing until the product sells. In many ways the custom builder has much lower overhead and invested but spends more time per machine which is where those costs rise. In reality these pros and cons of each style essentially wash out and that is why the pricing of custom machines is similar to those that are mass produced. Each having its own advantages. The big downside is that if a production machine builder does not make a profit he is out all his investment where as the home builder loses much less. Machine performance vs. value should be how everyone buys in my eyes. If you buy a $200 machine and are happy with it then great but that $400 machine really should out perform the lower cost machine or it is just not worth it to me regardless of whether it is custom or production.

Just my $0.02