I think people need to understand that in the UCONN lab they could build a new 3 inch epiwafer in 24 hours using the old MBE. Then they would cut it into 1 inch pieces to save money and process each piece separately so their turnaround time was very quick and they could make adjustments to the epi stack very quickly to tweak the layers and modes as required.
I really don't think people understand what a bottle neck they have been subjected to where that turnaround time turned into months rather than days for this cycle of learning. I think we could speculate that they should have had better knowledge and control over these issues but ultimately it is the reason for the big delays and the grossly miss judged projections.
If they have in fact installed an MOCVD at DenseLight and have a local supplier available to ramp up the wafer supply once they are satisfied with the results we could very easily see (if they share) a quick turnaround in achievements towards the alpha prototypes.
I continue to repeat this point. They are regaining control of the epitaxy to enable the quick turnaround required so that months before can now turn back into days like what they had going on at UCONN but this time with state of the art equipment in a modern foundry setting geared towards commercial volume production.
