Can one person make a living building these?
A working calculator, not a brochure. Parts costs are pulled from the same nightly BOM pipeline that prices the store — so the numbers can't quietly rot — and every real cost is in: the founder's own hours, shipping, returns, insurance, Claude, and taxes. Drag anything and watch the take‑home move. Prices are yours to set; everything else is honest defaults you can override.
Loading live parts costs…
What you control
Every value starts at an honest default. Change what's true for you.
Crunching…
Where the parts costs come from
Live from securaCV's build.json — the nightly Digi‑Key/Mouser snapshot behind every kit price. If that fetch ever fails, the page falls back to a committed snapshot and says so. It never invents a number.
The honest limits
The ceiling isn't demand — it's hours. One person hand‑building tops out near 120–140 units/month while doing every other job. Past that the gauge turns red: you need a richer mix, the attestation service, or outsourced assembly.
The biggest swing variable
Health insurance. It's ~a third of overhead and entirely personal — set it to $0 if you're on a spouse's plan and watch the living target drop. Tax and return rate are planning placeholders; a CPA sharpens both.
Where "free" still lives
None of this touches the software, firmware, STLs, or verifier — free at any scale. The self‑build path is $0 forever. Hardware carries an honest margin because one person's livelihood depends on it. Full reasoning: doc 23.