Mould Creation Time

[droneb]

This doesn't make sense to me. So apparently heaps of Chinese people have left the factory several weeks before a public holiday because it takes a few weeks to travel 1000's of kilometres. Its not like there walking several thousand kilometers, surely this cannot justify people leaving the factories severals weeks prior. How did 35 days turn into 2 months? I hope these are trustworthy people because the first time I brought something from China on Ebay was a horrible experience. They litterally made up excuses for two months saying stuff like my item needs to go back to the factory and keeping quiet most the the time. Thank god for Paypal.

Yes, China Factories normally close for around a week for 'Golden week', national holidays in China, and also the Mid Autumn festival is also during this holiday this year.
For many workers , apart from Chinese New Year , this is the longest break that they will have to go visit their families back home.
Please bear in mind that the majority of workers in factories live in dormatories near or on site, and do not have local homes.
The factories and Industrial areas are normally fairly isolated too.
Its not like people in the west that have a car, or can drive home.

China is a very big place, and huge numbers of workers migrate from home to work with all their belongings during these holidays.
The transport infrastructure is also not built to handle these huge numbers of people moving about, especially during holiday seasons, and it is always a huge pain travelling on any transport ( buses , trains, taxis) during this period.

I speak from experience, as I also oversee QC for plastics company in China.
Our factory has around 1000 workers, and normally any public holidays are accounted for in the production schedule of the factory.
I'm sure that Craigs appointed factory know exactly what they are doing, and usually they have given a conservative guess as to how it will affect production.
The 8days is probably the amount of time that the machines will be off, so they just advised that final shipment date may be pushed back accordingly.

first of all, thats not the longest holydays, its chinese new year (about 3 weeks).

i know they live in dorms usually above the factory, but the Delay seems excesive.

maybe thats my vision if i miss calculated from the data we have, did they or not start the production? or they are still, on the mould testing process.

, at this point i feel there wont be a panda under my xmas tree. (althrough these last years i havent had assembled a xmas tree, but i expect it to be under my pine bonsai) well, the money is out just hope for everything to run for the better.

 

[craigix]

They have just said they are going to try to get them done before the holiday. I suspect what we will see is finished cases but I'm not sure if they are going to do the full run as we probably won't have time to evaluate them, so I'm thinking if we time this right we can evaluate a small run in those 8 days, then when they come back to work they will have a detailed review waiting for them of any slight issues (if indeed there are any).

It is probably best that we spend 8 days with cases just putting them though some extreme testing. Probably on those 105 boards.

 

[berichandcreamy]

Like a day or two worth of cases? Then that would cover most/all of the first batch right?

(I wonder what number I am on the preorder list hmmm)

 

[bzar]

Like a day or two worth of cases? Then that would cover most/all of the first batch right?

(I wonder what number I am on the preorder list hmmm)

Probably not. I think they want to do a small (20 to 100 or so) sample batch first. This can be tested and evaluated before things are put to full motion. Nobody wants to end up with thousands of slightly flawed cases.

 

[matzesu]

The minimal batch is 10000, right? and they can make 2000 a day, so if they work 2 days whe have 4000 pandora cases, thats a good begining, because whe have ca3900 orders to delifered, and when the second batch is geting start, the moon festival ist over and they can make the other 6000 cases,
if whe need more, than whe can make more cases.. :rolleyes:

 

[droneb]

plastic testing doesnt works like that

since there are thermal variables here, a valid sample requies at least bout 3-4 hours continuated run to stablish runn optimals, no one likes a big batch of scrap plstic but that how moulds n plastic works

 

[craigix]

Yes, they could theoretically do them all at once, possibly before the holiday, but we don't want to have some tiny flaw in them all just because we didn't evaluate a test run of say 105.

Think about the slight flaws in the Wiz design, if they had actually sent a Wiz to DaveC for him to evaluate then you would have had a perfect Dpad rather than what there is now - all it took was a pivot point to be added, but now you won't get that without a DIY mod - and because GPH will have had about 10,000 made they can't do anything about it until they sell them all.

That is the sort of thing we are trying to avoid.

I should also probably point out that there isn't really any delay happening here as the board production is the main thing, not the cases.

 

[lulzfish]

I should also probably point out that there isn't really any delay happening here as the board production is the main thing, not the cases.

It is? For a long time, I thought the cases were the delay factor, but they must have caught up.

 

[matzesu]

do you have a so large celar for the 6000 cases, because whe need 4000 to delifer the orderes and the rest for the batches behind batch one,

 

[Phawx]

@Craig

Did you have that chat with Mweston? Is there any news on the boards being assembled in Texas? I can clearly see the boards being the slowest product built, but how many can they do a day? More importantly, can they START producing the boards, or is there something that needs to get changed?

If we are looking good, are they just going to do all 4,000 and get most of the cases delivered to them so all of us don't have to worry about tiered shipping?

There seems to be a lot of logistic hurdles. Right now though, I am slightly tense on the fact that you said you were going to talk to Mweston about the 105 and we haven't heard anything yet.

 

[jaycee900]

This sounds like more like November before we get them to me...might have to cancel and order again after xmas...seems like the end was getting nearer but gets taken away again

 

[droneb]

XD, two weeks (tm) to the attack again.

 

[MooTheKow]

I should also probably point out that there isn't really any delay happening here as the board production is the main thing, not the cases.

So - I've been following things fairly closely on the unofficial blog and in these forums and it has been made pretty clear to me that the case was in fact the thing that was holding things up. When did the board production become the bottleneck?

On the official Blog ED has the following post back at the end of June:

2009-06-30 02:31:51, posted by EvilDragon
..
So, first test mass production is still due to be finished on July 20th (you know, the ones we ordered a while ago) and all the parts are also on their way - which means: COMPLETE mass production of the boards could be happening soon!

Or how about this post that was on the Unofficial blog detailing info from MWeston:

July 5, 2009
The mold creation is the long 45 day process that will involve several reviews and tweaks but we are getting the mold company involved with this so that the time is used as efficiently as possible.
....
Based on these calculations, it looks like the end of August to start seeing fully assembled units and then shipping to customers in early September.

Seems to me the implication there is that the molds are the process that delayed things and that stuff were basically supposed to be done when they were finished...

So - what is the status of the boards now and when are they expected to be completed?

 

[DeadName]

Yes, they could theoretically do them all at once, possibly before the holiday, but we don't want to have some tiny flaw in them all just because we didn't evaluate a test run of say 105.

This is exactly what I love about you guys. I don't mind the delay if it means we get a more perfect Pandora in the end. ^_^

 

[craigix]

The boards so far seem superb.

 

[God Ginrai]

I should also probably point out that there isn't really any delay happening here as the board production is the main thing, not the cases.

So - I've been following things fairly closely on the unofficial blog and in these forums and it has been made pretty clear to me that the case was in fact the thing that was holding things up. When did the board production become the bottleneck?

On the official Blog ED has the following post back at the end of June:

2009-06-30 02:31:51, posted by EvilDragon
..
So, first test mass production is still due to be finished on July 20th (you know, the ones we ordered a while ago) and all the parts are also on their way - which means: COMPLETE mass production of the boards could be happening soon!

Or how about this post that was on the Unofficial blog detailing info from MWeston:

July 5, 2009
The mold creation is the long 45 day process that will involve several reviews and tweaks but we are getting the mold company involved with this so that the time is used as efficiently as possible.
....
Based on these calculations, it looks like the end of August to start seeing fully assembled units and then shipping to customers in early September.

Seems to me the implication there is that the molds are the process that delayed things and that stuff were basically supposed to be done when they were finished...

So - what is the status of the boards now and when are they expected to be completed?

My guess is that Craig means that since they haven't made more than the first 105 boards that when they get down to mass producing the boards and the cases, that the cases can be made at a much faster rate than the boards, making the boards the bottleneck,

The boards so far seem superb.

Awesome.

-God Ginrai

 

[sold]

Have any of you had any experience with Chinese tool makers? There is a down side to the monetary savings. That down side is time. In my experience, there will always be a delay, even if you are paid up and the rest of your project is perfectly in order. Often enough it comes down to lack of expertise, though I am sure it isn't always the case but I have heard complaints that indicate that it is often a problem.

Don't forget that China has only been industrialized for roughly 40-odd years. That in itself is both worrying and impressive. As a nation, what they lack in experience they more than make up for in man power. And to top it off, they are quick learners and seem to be unscrupulous when it comes to turning a profit.

Capitalists have a lot to learn from socialists (or communists. Which is China really anyway nowadays?)

By the sound of it, the problem isn't the amount of time needed to manufacture the Pandora case parts, it seems to me it is a problem with the tooling.

 

[Phawx]

@craig

Thank you! That puts my worry at ease. Do you think there is a chance to have the full production run by the time the molds complete?

Seeing as you want to only have a small run of the cases first to test for problems and possibly for FCC/CE testing, it's okay to get all of the boards done during this process, right? Or I suppose you should really get FCC/CE testing done first before making the remaining batches.

 

[-Tj-]

XD, two weeks (tm) to the attack again.

"how long will it take?"
"two weeks."
"does it involve any fruits or vegetables?"
"two weeks."
"excuse me?"
"ewweh... two weeks. twwwoooowooo wwooeeeeeeks..."

:lol:

Yes, they could theoretically do them all at once, possibly before the holiday, but we don't want to have some tiny flaw in them all just because we didn't evaluate a test run of say 105.

This is exactly what I love about you guys. I don't mind the delay if it means we get a more perfect Pandora in the end. ^_^

I agree, it's great that they're willing to make sure it's perfect before sending it out to us. However a lot of people have been waiting delay after delay for their units so I can understand their impatience. I haven't followed the whole thing (I only ordered mine about a week ago), but when you're waiting, a couple more weeks can seem like forever.

 

[Sphinxter]

Have any of you had any experience with Chinese tool makers? There is a down side to the monetary savings. That down side is time. In my experience, there will always be a delay, even if you are paid up and the rest of your project is perfectly in order. Often enough it comes down to lack of expertise, though I am sure it isn't always the case but I have heard complaints that indicate that it is often a problem.

Don't forget that China has only been industrialized for roughly 40-odd years. That in itself is both worrying and impressive. As a nation, what they lack in experience they more than make up for in man power. And to top it off, they are quick learners and seem to be unscrupulous when it comes to turning a profit.

Capitalists have a lot to learn from socialists (or communists. Which is China really anyway nowadays?)

By the sound of it, the problem isn't the amount of time needed to manufacture the Pandora case parts, it seems to me it is a problem with the tooling.

Just pay the bribe.