I don't want to take this thread on a tangent, but I figured I would mention this. My business owns on of theses
PlasmaCAM Cutting Systems
Its a CNC plasma cutter, similar to a water jet, but it uses plasma instead of water. I was thinking it might help this open source controller effort in two ways.
1. It may be used to cut the copper bus bars. To be honest I have never tried to cut copper with it, but it does a great job on steel and aluminum. It could potentially cut a whole bunch of bus bars out in one shot out of a sheet of copper. The edges might have to be sanded a bit to make them nice an smooth, but it could save $. If you buy sheets of anything it is less than buying small pieces of bar stock.
2. The manufacturer has a optional tool holder that can be used to hold other tools like a drill, rotary saw, or router. This machine has an XY precision of 0.0005" and a X precision of 0.005". With an appropriate cutting tool attached it could also mill the boards. I don't know if that would be cheaper than buying them pre-etched, but its a consideration.
Also, this machine is great at making things like adapter plates and flanges. Any two dimensional shape that you can draw in CAD can be done in minutes. Its one of the most useful tools in our shop and sure beats sending things out to get cut.