Hello All, production parts are in and we’re in the full swing of assembly! I plan to document this entire process with photos the best that I can. Serial no. 00001 has been built and is being used to dial in the software tuning for production machines. Serial no. 00002 is being built up now and will be sent out to the lab for CE certification. While we work towards this safety cert, which will take as much as 4 weeks, we will continue building, testing, and packaging machines so that once certification is received, we may start shipping out immediately.
The new ultrasonic cleaning machine has been hooked up and works well! We’re about ¼ of the way through cleaning the first 200 sets of parts that were shipped before Chinese New Year. So far, we’ve assembled anti-vacuum valves and pressure release valves into steam manifolds, steam wands with internal compression springs and seals that allow for articulation into steam valves, and now onto boilers which are a bit more involved with heating elements and various valves and sensors.
Delays. Unfortunately we had some small adjustments made to top and bottom plates so we were only able to receive 2 sets of each before CNY. One for Serial 1 testing and marketing, and one for the Serial 2 certification machine. Those pieces are now being made with the promise of the first 50 being shipped Feb 10 and 50+ more each week after. As units are built, they will sit on the shelf until CE certification has been granted and we can immediately start shipping.
Our custom designed compression piston springs were also delayed. Those were coiled locally and sent out to California to be shot peened which is a process that adds a residual stress layer and increases the life of the springs which is expected to be ~150,000 cycles before starting to lose strength. These were just picked up on Monday and looking great!
Now that suppliers are starting to come back to work after their holiday we should see the remaining parts shipping out over the next few weeks which should allow a seamless transition between the first 200 sets and the remaining quantities. I will keep everyone posted on progress, but I plan on sending continuous shipments out starting the end of February all through March.
As mentioned previously, we have about 70 extra units in this first batch of over 600. We will open these up for sale this Friday, Feb 10 at 10am MST. Once some machines have been reviewed, we will fully open orders for a second batch, ideally in mid Feb. These will see a small price increase as well as some very minor changes to optimize design and bring part cost down.
The Steam Wand Block-Off piece is in stock and will be posted on the site soon. I’ll get some photos of that installed for those who are interested.
2 barrels of springs stuffed into the Samurai!
A crate of production parts being unloaded.
Serial no. 0001 going together!
We’re busy but what are we doing?
The past month has been all over the place. A lot of my time was spent talking to suppliers about small design updates to improve the manufacturing process based on tools and stock size that are more readily available. Tool paths are also optimized to improve part tolerances without adding additional cost.
Once parts are made, they’re inspected by the supplier who sends me am inspection sheet like the one below.
I’ve been working with my packaging engineer to finalize design now that we’ve got production parts in for sizing. We’ve decided to switch to molded pulp internal trays which are made from an aluminum tool to match the profile of the machine and accessories and allows for a stronger internal structure. We think this will improve packaging quality enough to justify the additional mold cost.
Now that the first production machine has been built I’ve been doing a lot of testing. Unfortunately I haven’t taken care of my Scace 2 device as well as I should have and I believe the thermocouple wires have chafed through their insulation and are seeing some grounding issues. My values are jumping all over sporadically so I’ll likely just swap in a new thermocouple and try to build some more of my own devices for internal testing of production machines.
Part tolerancing checks to review post manufacturing. Suppliers send me this to show that several parts out of the batch are all in compliance with the specified tolerances to ensure fitment during assembly.
Finally, a look at Serial no. 0001!
Software
Small software updates now that we’re testing on the production machine.
Sincerely,
Ross Ainsworth