Projects like these are not about the destination, man. They’re about the journey.
My guess is that more than anything this was an exercise in learning the processes of soldering small, tightly packed smd components.
Eye balling the reflow profile with a thermocouple you threw in there is brilliant! I have a thermocouple readout on my DMM. I could go do this today with parts I have right now. That is wonderful, thankyou!
I do not, I've never even done reflow. I briefly considered making the toaster, because it's a very fun project, but in the end I think I'm just going to get my PCBs assembled.
I am huge fan of automated assembly as well, I think it unlocks designs that no one would even start to think about, like laying out thousands of discrete components on a single board. Esp if applying an aspect to a circuit, like "apply esd protection" or "apply bypass caps" or "apply pull low / high".