[extrapickles]

Most things I’ve found to be reasonably priced for what they are.

Most products are made with much higher quality materials than you would find in consumer gear. Also the “rated” spec for parts is expected to be understated as the “unreliable” part is one that fails in under 7-10 years of being run at the absolute limit of its spec. If a part fails in 2 years I will completely stop using that vendors products, as having a machine that is worth $1k/hr going down for even a day or two wipes out any savings.

Another factor is the total sales volume of automation products is low, so the engineering costs dominate pretty much everything in that space, even though everything is somewhat optimized to reduce engineering time (the buyers and/or vendors).