I'm involved with pneumatic connector manufacturing, and we had trouble for awhile getting raw aluminum at any price to make them. At one point we had to buy 3" aluminum bar and use our lathe to turn it down to the size we actually needed (mostly a mix of 2" and 2.5") causing a insane amount of aluminum and time to be wasted (yes the scrap is recycled, but its worth 1/10 of it in bar form). During this it was tempting to tell customers placing orders that if they want their parts faster than 3 months, they need to send us raw aluminum so we can actually make their order.

For some of the other "jelly bean" parts we need (o-rings, snap rings, etc) we are looking at making them in-house, but both the raw materials and machinery to make them are not possible to get. We could spend the next few months making our own machines to fabricate them, but without being able to source steel and various rubbers any more reliably than the finished goods, there isn't much point.

At this point, its tempting to try and raise capital to start mining and smelting aluminum, steel and buy an oil well and small refinery so we can ensure we have the materials needed to keep production smooth.