I know most of you noticed already - but the first emails to place the final order of the Pyra has been sent to the first 25 preorders, more will follow as we continue the assembly.
I concentrated on preassembling as many units as possible, so I didn't visit the boards and didn't read any threads yet... but I'll try to follow up and reply to all the questions you've had.
Before I start telling a bit about how the mass assembly went, first some information about how we'll proceed from here.
1. As the first 200 units are not fixed by the date of the preorder but of the Pre-Preorder, I cannot tell a "Pre-Orders until date xy should have received their email". This will be the case AFTER the first 200 pre-preorders have been fulfilled (which is less than 200 in reality, as some have cancelled their order at some time). Until then, I'll let you know which pre-preorder number we're currently at.
2. If you are within the range and should've received your email but didn't, please contact me (either by PM, email to shop@dragonbox.de, on Discord or IRC).
3. The first produced batch of PCBs are a bit more of 500. I'll order the rest when the first 100 - 150 have been delivered, so there might be a short break after the first 500.
4. We have around 386 fully coated cases. The remaining ones... didn't work out, but more on that later.
Now, onto the assembly itself
Assembling the units didn't work flawlessly. In fact, it reminded me a lot of the first batch of Pandoras we created. There are some tolerances here and there that can be optimized in the mould that will make assembly a lot faster and easier.
This is something you can't really find out with small production runs - as it can be these tolerances only affect 10% of the units. So with 10 units produced, it would be a single unit... but that's not enough to determine whether that's a real tolerance issue or just an issue with that one PCB.
With 1000 units, it's 100 units that need special treatment... and that's something you don't want.
For example: The left nub. It hangs on some units. The fix is easy: Remove about 0.2mm plastic on the inside of the case. That's not much, but doing so makes it work on ALL units.
As disassembling the units in which the nub hangs takes too much time, I'm removing the plastic up front on all cases. When that's fixed in the mould, it's one step less I need to do.
Another small issue was that there are some plastic remnants at some areas of the case. We'll cut these before we do any of the assembly, and it doesn't even take long - but if that can be fixed upfront in the production, it makes life easier and assembling units faster.
All in all, it went pretty well, the units look gorgeous and only a few issues remain. But it's more work than it should be, similar as it was with the first revision of the Pandora, and we'll continue improving it in the future.
The quality of the end product is mostly fine, there are just a few things which define the first batch
1. The battery cover is a bit hard to open. The issue lies in the cover, not the backside, so if that's an issue for anyone, we can offer a replacement later on.
2. The stylus is also sometimes a bit harder to pull out than it should be (probably due to the added color coating in the case). it wears out over time, but we'll also try to fix it.
3. All shoulder buttons work - but the travel distance of the upper shoulder buttons on some units is a bit short. I'll also figure out how to improve that so they feel the same on all units.
Apart from that, the final units turned out to be pretty cool. I especially love the semi-transparent logo on the backside of the cover. If you use two different colors on the LEDs, it's an awesome looking gradient from one color into the other!
What's up with the case coating?
The reason we couldn't start earlier with the full assembly was that I was not satisfied with the coating.
The first batch had quality issues, the second had a lot of units that scratched very easily.
So the coating company had to further analyse and define a program with an exact amount of color / clear coating.
The end result is awesome! The last batch I received looks awesome and it's pretty scratch resistant!
Unfortunately, the first two batches weren't good enough for me to deliver them as final products.
Which means: A bit over 600 of these cases can't be used for the final units.
The company agreed to pay for another production run of these 600, as it was their fault, so it's no financial loss for us.
In fact, it saves us a bit of work, as it means we can do the tweaks to the moulds before the production, so we only need to do the additional manual work on the first around 350 units.
However, I am fully against throwing these cases away and I also don't want the company to make a huge loss, so I will try to get these coated shells from them as well and sell them for the production cost price in the shop.
So you will be able to get imperfect replacement cases for a pretty cheap price and the full payment will help to lower the loss of the coating company.
I think that's a good solution.
So much for today. This week, we'll ship the already ordered units and probably send out the next emails. In the meantime, preassembly and assembly will continue.
And I will start a section here at the boards where I let you know about the status and quirks of the OS as well as how to report bugs, so we can start to improve the OS
I concentrated on preassembling as many units as possible, so I didn't visit the boards and didn't read any threads yet... but I'll try to follow up and reply to all the questions you've had.
Before I start telling a bit about how the mass assembly went, first some information about how we'll proceed from here.
1. As the first 200 units are not fixed by the date of the preorder but of the Pre-Preorder, I cannot tell a "Pre-Orders until date xy should have received their email". This will be the case AFTER the first 200 pre-preorders have been fulfilled (which is less than 200 in reality, as some have cancelled their order at some time). Until then, I'll let you know which pre-preorder number we're currently at.
2. If you are within the range and should've received your email but didn't, please contact me (either by PM, email to shop@dragonbox.de, on Discord or IRC).
3. The first produced batch of PCBs are a bit more of 500. I'll order the rest when the first 100 - 150 have been delivered, so there might be a short break after the first 500.
4. We have around 386 fully coated cases. The remaining ones... didn't work out, but more on that later.
Now, onto the assembly itself
Assembling the units didn't work flawlessly. In fact, it reminded me a lot of the first batch of Pandoras we created. There are some tolerances here and there that can be optimized in the mould that will make assembly a lot faster and easier.
This is something you can't really find out with small production runs - as it can be these tolerances only affect 10% of the units. So with 10 units produced, it would be a single unit... but that's not enough to determine whether that's a real tolerance issue or just an issue with that one PCB.
With 1000 units, it's 100 units that need special treatment... and that's something you don't want.
For example: The left nub. It hangs on some units. The fix is easy: Remove about 0.2mm plastic on the inside of the case. That's not much, but doing so makes it work on ALL units.
As disassembling the units in which the nub hangs takes too much time, I'm removing the plastic up front on all cases. When that's fixed in the mould, it's one step less I need to do.
Another small issue was that there are some plastic remnants at some areas of the case. We'll cut these before we do any of the assembly, and it doesn't even take long - but if that can be fixed upfront in the production, it makes life easier and assembling units faster.
All in all, it went pretty well, the units look gorgeous and only a few issues remain. But it's more work than it should be, similar as it was with the first revision of the Pandora, and we'll continue improving it in the future.
The quality of the end product is mostly fine, there are just a few things which define the first batch
1. The battery cover is a bit hard to open. The issue lies in the cover, not the backside, so if that's an issue for anyone, we can offer a replacement later on.
2. The stylus is also sometimes a bit harder to pull out than it should be (probably due to the added color coating in the case). it wears out over time, but we'll also try to fix it.
3. All shoulder buttons work - but the travel distance of the upper shoulder buttons on some units is a bit short. I'll also figure out how to improve that so they feel the same on all units.
Apart from that, the final units turned out to be pretty cool. I especially love the semi-transparent logo on the backside of the cover. If you use two different colors on the LEDs, it's an awesome looking gradient from one color into the other!
What's up with the case coating?
The reason we couldn't start earlier with the full assembly was that I was not satisfied with the coating.
The first batch had quality issues, the second had a lot of units that scratched very easily.
So the coating company had to further analyse and define a program with an exact amount of color / clear coating.
The end result is awesome! The last batch I received looks awesome and it's pretty scratch resistant!
Unfortunately, the first two batches weren't good enough for me to deliver them as final products.
Which means: A bit over 600 of these cases can't be used for the final units.
The company agreed to pay for another production run of these 600, as it was their fault, so it's no financial loss for us.
In fact, it saves us a bit of work, as it means we can do the tweaks to the moulds before the production, so we only need to do the additional manual work on the first around 350 units.
However, I am fully against throwing these cases away and I also don't want the company to make a huge loss, so I will try to get these coated shells from them as well and sell them for the production cost price in the shop.
So you will be able to get imperfect replacement cases for a pretty cheap price and the full payment will help to lower the loss of the coating company.
I think that's a good solution.
So much for today. This week, we'll ship the already ordered units and probably send out the next emails. In the meantime, preassembly and assembly will continue.
And I will start a section here at the boards where I let you know about the status and quirks of the OS as well as how to report bugs, so we can start to improve the OS
