Technicolor
Hey folks, hope all is well! Gonna get right to it.
Adjusted Shipping Dates
Now that I have had a few days of assembly I have discovered a lot of the time sinks and awkward steps. My initial plan to complete full frames first is not as efficient as I had hoped. It creates a lot of odd angles and I found myself removing frame sections to add in other parts.
Right now the best method seems to be separating the build into eight main steps:
Assemble the head section frame
Mount and wire grinder, pumps, servo, pour over mechanism, etc
Mount front screen/panel
Assemble the base frame
mount/wire boiler, controller boards
connect wiring harnesses and tubing between base and head
Mount head section to base
Mount remaining bamboo and acrylic panels
So, with all of those constraints figured out, I am moving the first shipment to December 12th. This initial shipment will only be 5 units. This will give me a couple of extra days to tie up some remaining software to-dos as well as another day or two to work on the assembly manual.
After that we will ship 10 more units on Friday the 14th. From there we will move to 25 units and then finally shipments of 50 units going out twice a week.
Here is a rough breakdown linked with your backer number:
Dec 12 | 5 Units | Backers 1-5
Dec 14 | 10 Units | Backers 6-15
Dec 18 | 25 Units | Backers 26-40
Dec 21 | 25 Units | Backers 41-65
Dec 28 | 50 units | Backers 66-116
Jan 3 | 50 Units | Backers 117- 167
At this point we will be shipping 50 units two times a week:
Jan 7-11 | 100 Units | Backers 168-278
Jan 14 -18 | 100 Units | Backers 279 - 337 and then on to the Website preorders
This does not yet take into consideration whether you ordered a kit or a fully assembled unit. I have not completed a kit boxing run through yet. I will be doing this over the next several days. I will be able to complete kits much faster than assembled units so the above numbers will shift forward. Once I have some timings on the kit setup, I will run those numbers against order types and release a much more exact time table.
This updated time table will be out before the 12th but no units- either kits or assembled, will get out until the 12th.
I was really hoping to be well into shipping by now but there were definitely some things I needed to learn before properly ramping up.
Color Panels
I made a visit with a new plastic supplier today and was able to source some acrylic in really gorgeous colors. There was some very early discussion about offering replacement panels in different colors but it was always something I said we would think about way way later. Well, its way way later now so there has been some movement. I haven't figured out the best way to proceed with this and I don't want it to impact our current assembly run.
I'll have more info on this in the next update but here is a sneaky peaky of one of the colors:
Shiny.
Again.
Ok, thats it for now. Next update will be on Saturday. Thanks!
Cheers,
-m