Comment by abetusk

To me, here are the most relevant bits of why they chose the CHMT36VA over others:

    Let me say that the needs or SparkX are slightly odd.
    We need to build 10-50 of a design and see how it
    sells. As it sells we may need to build 100-500pcs.
    If a design needs more than 500 pieces then it
    immediately gets moved over to our proper SMD
    production lines with much more capable machines.
    SparkX needed something small and quick to setup.
    After evaluating all the various vendors we decided
    on the CHMT36VA. It seemed to be the best fit of
    low-cost and most flexible while being able to get
    the job done.

Right before it:

    ... the nail in the coffin for the Neodyn 4 in my eyes
    ... he says the feeders aren’t that great, they are
    challenging to load, and machine makes mispicks quite
    often. Why spend ~$10k on a machine when I can have a
    cheaper machine with less hassle? The CHMT36VA is far
    from perfect but I can work around the problems.

It's not that the CHMT36VA (the $2.8k PnP machine in question) is great or competes with "industrial" pick and place machines, it's that it's optimized for small to medium runs. To me, this is very much in line with "fail fast" or "lean startup" philosophy but for electronics. SparkFun can make a small experiment with minimal risk.