Hello All,
Really sorry for the much overdue email update!
We’re currently up to Order 559 which roughly equates to 345 machines shipped! This puts us at 60% of the way through batch 1. While this may not sound encouraging, keep in mind that 41% of these units have shipped this year alone.
We’ve recently plotted some data to track warranty issues relative to units shipped as well as how many we’ve shipped per month.
The returns due to warranty issues tracks with the early issue of the steam manifold o-ring which has been addressed for several months now. If you haven’t run into any issues with your machine up until now, this isn’t something you’ll need to worry about. The second small spike came from a small alignment issue with our redundant pressurestat on a very small number of machines which led to a short. This has also since been addressed and warranty issues are on a declining trend which is to be expected!
On the other hand, our units shipped per month saw a significant increase in December, then a slight dip as we lost a technician and started dealing with initial warranty repairs, now a steady rise. I expect to realistically do at least 80 machines this month with a stretch goal of 100.
Batch 1 Configuration Changes
In an effort to further improve our assembly efficiency, we will not accommodate anymore configuration changes to batch 1 orders ie: steam wand side, wood option, powder coat color, etc. Orders for add-ons will still be allowed, but please place them as early as possible if you would like them to ship with your machine. Otherwise they may ship separately.
Staffing
We’ve continued to add to the team since our last update! Wern has joined us as a part time customer support representative from all the way down in Australia. As an Argos owner, she’s very familiar with the quirks of pulling shots on the machine as a new user as well as possible issues and diagnostics.
Kennie has joined the team as our new full time Order Fulfillment Technician. Hiring is never easy as it always takes time to get people spooled up. Now that Kennie has been with us for over a month, the Odyssey Team is settling into a good rhythm.
General Updates
We’re continuing to tuning the assembly process through the use of 3D printed jigs for assisting in alignment to improve consistency and quality. Duplicates of our most commonly used tools have been added to maintain consistent sets across all workstations and avoid the need to share between techs.
Powder Coating:
Last year we received new white groupheads from the supplier since several of our original ones had corrosion forming in the cylinder bore due to a mistake in the powder coating process. Unfortunately as we started using the new groupheads, we found that they were more cream colored than the rest of the white parts. We decided to take them to a local powder coating shop to have them stripped and re-coated to match. The parts were finally stripped last week and are expected to be coated this week.
We have 8 white machines that are completely assembled minus the grouphead. Once those are in, all of those older serial numbers will be prioritized and shipped out immediately. Really sorry about that delay! We’ll send a little gift with your machines.
It’s inevitable that while building and QCing machines, small dings or scratches can occur. We’ve started testing out a new liquid powder solution and heating with a soldering heat gun. This has been working extremely well for smaller touch ups and is proving to be very durable. For larger touch ups, we’ve been disassembling the affected components and will do a re-coat and bake in house with a small powder coating setup..
To mitigate these small issues, we’ve picked up rubber trays to build on with separate smaller rubber parts trays as well as rubber liners on our shelves. This should help protect surfaces over the original thin neoprene foam layers we’ve used to line our tables while also reducing any accidental placing of machines on parts or tools.
Wood Matching:
Portafilters were one of the first few components we sourced for this business. Over time we found a new wood supplier that was delivering higher quality parts that were more within spec. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes we’re not able to find a good match between our walnut portafilters and the rest of our walnut parts.
We’re working on getting new portafilter handles made from our current wood supplier and will be able to send out new handles to anyone with a drastically different shade. Unfortunately it’s impossible to perfectly match all of the wood on each machine so we do our best at that from the shop but we also recognize that some portafilter handles in particular are very far out of the norm.
SCA Expo:
William and I brought 2 people from our team to expo this year! We had a great corner booth and were able to show off and pull shots on 3 production machines displaying the capabilities and flavors from our 6 bar, 8 bar, and direct profiles on a variety of coffees.
The main goal of Expo for us is not necessarily a sales or marketing event, but more of a networking and educational experience. Our very first expo where we had a booth was World of Coffee Milan which is where we met our Italian parts supplier. That connection alone made the entire event worthwhile. On top of meeting new suppliers, I find it a great time to meet other founders and employees at various stages of production. This year I was able to chat with folks from Superkop, Meticulous, Zerno, Weber, ArtPresso Design, MX Cool, and more! By developing these relationships, it makes it easier to discuss things like how we all address powder coating issues, process updates, wood suppliers, patent writers, and more! The coffee community really is a great group where companies are willing to share helpful tips and tricks to help each other out to continue the advancement of new products.
First Official Review:
As I’m sure most people have already seen, our first official product review has been posted by Lance Hedrick. We’ve been careful not to send out any free review units before we’re at a good spot with shipping paid production machines. Some reviewers did pay for pre-orders and will ship accordingly. Lance was the first to receive his machine in early March. He spent the next month pulling and Scace testing over 300 shots, and then released his initial review, followed by a deep dive review calling the Argos the “Best bang for your buck, period.” He covers our shot temperature consistency and precision while also going into the tradeoffs that this creates with pre infusion pressure.
BEST BANG FOR YOUR BUCK: Argos by Odyssey Review
We do have one more big review machine that will be sent out with Batch 1 and a few more lined up in Batch 2 which will hopefully give everyone as much objective feedback as possible. Many of the critiques we’ve seen are pretty consistent across the board relating to aesthetic improvements, drip tray splatter, and ease of filling. All of these and more will be addressed over time as new parts are ordered.
Business Operations:
William and I have been quite busy the past month working on getting our 2023 financials up to date with our bookkeeper. It’s always a continued effort to improve documentation and organization which we haven’t been the best at keeping up with due to always having a ton of tasks on our plates at the same time. With taxes being due in April it took a lot of work to get everything organized and in place. We’ve now started doing bi-weekly meetings to sit down and stay on top of everything finance related so we don’t have to deal with this again next year!
Once the remaining batch 2 parts are ordered, I will work on assembling, QC, and packing machines to help catch us up in preparation for batch 2 parts to arrive. At our current rate, we will realistically get all of batch 1 orders out by July and go immediately into batch 2. The design changes, fixtures and jigs, and continued hiring will help us build and ship units slightly quicker than batch 1 but without having those parts in hand, we don’t want to assume actual numbers. We do feel confident that all batch 2 units will be out the door before the end of the year.
Internal process updates
William has been working hard at improving our internal processes and tracking. Address confirmations and shipped machine tracking emails are now automated to the click of a button. We’ve been revisiting our shipping contracts and William has been able to automate quoting and label creation to a single click without the need to manually enter customer information manually which was sometimes required due to changes in shipping addresses.
App Updates
Now that William will soon no longer need to spend time creating shipping labels and internal automation, he’ll be going back to working on app and software updates. We have a few known bugs with the app which will be addressed first, then some fine tuning of the firmware based on our collected QC data.
Out of spec part with correct angle but threaded too far into the boiler. This is the elbow fitting for the fill tube up to the grouphead.
In spec part with correct angle and height. This will make grouphead installation easier for techs with improved alignment and consistency.
We now pre-prep all top plates with LEDS to save time during the final build operation.
PCB prep. We’ve got 2 awesome sub assembly techs that always stay on top part prep before final build.
Holy Crema! These beans were rested for 2 weeks!
Wouldn’t be an update without customer photos! The ultimate manual setup?!
Love a clean extraction!
Sincerely,
Ross & William