Hundreds or thousands of something is typically not a hobbyist venture. Also remember that placing parts is only one step of the process. If you're going to automate assembly by purchasing a P&P, you should also be ready to do high-volume stenciling and have a fast oven. In any case, the time spent aligning the machine and setting up reels can be a significant fraction of the time to just place parts manually. In some cases, you could have placed parts for your entire run by hand before you finished setting up the machine!
Depending on how complex your board is, building, say, 100 units by hand isn't time consuming. I've soldered literally thousands of through-hole boards and SMT is much faster and easier to do by hand.
Depending on how complex your board is, building, say, 100 units by hand isn't time consuming. I've soldered literally thousands of through-hole boards and SMT is much faster and easier to do by hand.