Genesis

There's a real issue here with "business model" and reality though.

Would you buy a car if you had no reasonable assurance that you'd be able to get, for instance, a replacement ECU if the one in the vehicle took a crap?

I wouldn't. You probably wouldn't either, because such an event would leave you with a worthless hunk of metal and plastic.

But that is precisely the model that we're being asked to buy into with the currnet Rebreather manufacturers. There is no reasonable assurance that these firms are "going concerns" when delivery lead times are anywhere from months to well north of a YEAR!

You want me to spend $10,000 on something that has proprietary parts in it that I cannot duplicate reasonably or at all, which I'm dependant on, and for which I have no reasonable assurance that the supplier will remain in business producing the device?

No thanks. I'll build first, because that way I know I can reproduce whatever might break.

I'm willing to consider factory-built if and only if I have reasonable assurance that if I need Part "X" at some point it can be stuffed in a FedEx box and to my location in a day or two. At any time in the forseeable lifetime of the product. No ifs, ands or buts.

This means, to me, that I have to be able to buy "off the rack", because that's the only way you can demonstrate to me that the components ARE available immediately if I should need something.

ALL the current Rebreather manufacturers violate this and they get away with it because we, as consumers of these products, allow it. There is no reason it has to be this way, and allowing it not only leaves us in a situation where we can't get what we need when we need it, but also radically drives up the cost of these units because nobody has had an incentive to get proper funding to back mass production of these products.

Both of these problems would go away if we would refuse to "cooperate"....