Garth, here's the breakdown:
To create the automaton, you need:
1 power core = cost $300,000 each in moonglow OR looted from regal chest as an uncommon / rare item
1 recipe = cost 10 kotl turn in items
1 kotl actuator? = cost 5 kotl turn in items
1 inoperative head = found on dead automatons occasionally, or as uncommon / rare drop in regal chest
An asston of ingots
Now, because so many kotl items are needed, you can slog it out killing fire elementals for about 5 hours and take your chances getting ganked
OR
you can trigger kotl spawn using 8 cores (8x300k=2.4mil or have done a lot of chests and collected them).
The spawn runs for about an hour, and between the 3 of us today we got about forty kotl arties.
However, it is a pain in the ass to start, so folks seen to prefer the 5 hour slog unless they have a group.
I have a ton of cores and heads, and I have the recipe now. I believe a gm tink can transfer a created one too another GM tink.
Hope that clears it up.
I sometimes sell 8 cores for 800k for folks wanting to do spawn, or if people want to do it while I'm on I just donate them like this morning.