I don't think royalties have anything to do with the price. The transducer isn't protected by any patent I've seen but I haven't done an exhaustive search. I think the price is high due to the tuning & tweaking required for each installation. Since you don't know where the customer will be you figure two round trip plane tickets across the US at $500 a pop. Two professionals a couple days work at $1000/day/person. Throw in a few hotel nights at $125 somewhere cheap, $1500-$2K for the device, $500 for lumber and other materials and a 300-400% margin due to the PIA factor for each install. I understand the $13K........
I looked into pricing some prototype molds for the plastic blades (been wanting to do an 8" flared port also), a plastic hub and such and think the components could be tooled in aluminum for much less than the price a single thigpen. I think these could be shipped as an "assemble it yourself kit" for a couple thousand using low volume tooling for the molded parts. The difficult part would be finding a plastic molder that would run the odd quantities. you'd be okay on the fan blades since it's multiplied by 5 or 6 per unit, but the not many molders would want to run an insert molded part by hand in the low volumes required. you start adding a pick and place robot and your fixed cost just went way up. Plus the do it yourself kit involve line voltage so someone would zap themselves or burn down their house and that equals lawsuit. Might be able to get around the legal mumbo with some finely crafted CYA disclaimers or require the use of a licensed electrician.
I used to be a product engineer for an appliance part maker that made thermostats for clothes dryers and everytime someone dryed a batch of shop rags from the garage or a gasoline soaked shirt and burned their house down we got sued since it was a UL listed safety device. They generally didn't win but we had a mark up percentage in our cost structure to cover legal expenses. We lost a few cases even when there were obvious levels of hydrocarbons inside the drum in the lab reports. OF course doing it right would require UL listing and you just tacked on a cool $100K or so to put the little white stamp on it.
Maybe after I finish my basement and honey-do list shrinks a bit I'll pick up a CAD program and throw something together and actually get some parts quoted. If you did it right you could use a lot of off the shelf componentry and minimize the high cost, custom machined/molded stuff. Some of it would be unavoidable though.
Whats peoples thoughts on what a reasonable/successful market price would be for such a device? Obviously $13K is not quite a mass appealing price point.