I don't know where they got the LPKF machinery, but I do know that there were many complaints about the level of support that the distributor or agent provided. It was purchased from an authorized source, AFAIK, and brand new, together with the required software. Since the owner is quite sophisticated in dealing with NC machines, as he also owns a very large metal fabrication business, I doubt there was much "messing around" with low-quality tools.

As for holding their mouths wrong, well, it's possible. I wasn't present when all this happened.

However, I know they can turn a prototype board around in a few hours, i.e. I've turned in schematics in the evening and had finished assembled boards on my desk on the following morning. AFAIK, they have a chemical process that they use, though they have laser equipment as well. The only hardware I know they obtained from eBay was a gerber plotter. I don't know how much use that gets.

As for the PCB routing software. Back when this was going on, Eagle (Beagle, as I like to call it) was on release 9.-something. It often took 3-4 days to finish a route (using LINUX, as Windows made it take a week) of a generously spaced 5-6 IC board with few passives other than bypass. After that, it required 10 days of hand routing to "fix" its anomalies. PCAD (I don't use it, but others I know do.) routed the same netlist in, typically 20-30 minutes and its output could be used without modification. Basic things, like optimal use of available space was not avaiable as a feature on BEagle then. I don't know what it does now. The 2-layer version is properly priced at $0.00, though it may be worth something. The full-up version is only useful if you skip the schematic package and, IMHO, would be overpriced at $1.00. Ahh, but that's another story ...

RE