News / development
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Mar 03, 2016
We're on a Boat!
The 20-foot shipping container full of Quadshot parts steamed out of Shenzhen as scheduled on the APL Denmark! She has already stopped off in Taiwan, and is now headed to the Port of Oakland with an ETA of June 11. You can track the Denmark's position here (ships only update their position when they are near shore). It is supposed to take 3-4 days for the container to clear customs and get trucked to us in Santa Cruz, so we’re planning a container unloading party for around Friday the 15th. Fingers crossed! Thus we still believe that kits - Lattes, Cappuccinos, and Espressos - will begin to ship...
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Mar 03, 2016
Production Update
Hello all, It’s about time for another update on our progress towards getting you your Quadshots! Foam Molding: First and Second Shots As we said in our last update, the foam ‘first shots’ (first test parts out of the molds) were originally scheduled to be completed February 20th, but the mold tooling company encountered some delays and took almost two extra weeks. On March 3rd (Jeff’s last full day in China) the molds had made it to the molding company and been mounted into the molding machine, and Jeff went to see the first shots get made: First shots are...
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Mar 03, 2016
Production has Started!
Hello all, We’ve had an incredibly busy few weeks, with production runs on your Quadshots finally under way! We received all the plastic parts from our US based plastics supplier, and here are the boxes with enough plastic parts for 400 Quadshots: The new and (post the prototype run we mentioned in the last update) slightly improved electronics box: Brand new off the molds! And 1600 ABS-PC pylon skeletons: The Lisa/Ms for the Espresso level awards also ran through their production run for the Kickstarter deliveries. Here we see them being assembled at Dallas Electronics, our Santa Cruz based...
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Mar 03, 2016
Lia PCBs and a big pile of electronic components
On Wednesday we gathered up the 40+ reels of resistors, capacitors, LEDs, microcontrollers, connectors, sensors, and other parts and brought them to our PCB assembler so that Lisa/M production can begin. If all goes well over there we should get Lisa/Ms in a couple of weeks. Here's all the goodies stacked up and ready to go: Also, we received the first Lia prototype PCBs today! We can't wait to assemble and test them: As you can see, all the inputs and outputs are on 0.1" spacing to make them easy to solder in wires or use with header pins - we're...
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Mar 03, 2016
Plastics!
We received the first 25 pieces of the electronics enclosures, lids, and pylon ‘skeletons’ from the injection-molding company, and they are beautiful! The rest are in production and will arrive in about 10 days. Check 'em out: We just had to build a new wing to celebrate: Chris has been flying whenever the weather cooperates, and it was a beautiful day yesterday so we got out and shot some video that we will post ASAP. As a result of software updates and Pranay’s gain tuning, the Quadshot is flying even more smoothly and stably than before, and we’re also now...
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Mar 03, 2016
Lucky 13!
We’re excited to announce that we’ve kicked off production of the two major structural components of the Quadshot, namely the injection mold tooling for the plastic parts (e.g., center electronics box, lids, and reinforcing ‘skeletons’ for the pylons) and the mold tooling for all the EPP foam parts! Huzzah! And there was much rejoicing. As we said in the previous update, we chose an American plastic injection-molding company that specializes in fast turnaround and runs of less than 10,000 parts, so the mold machining and first sample plastic parts will only take 2 weeks or so to arrive. Once we...
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Mar 03, 2016
Small Steps towards the Giant Leap!!
Hello all, Apologies again for the lack of updates! We are working hard to sort out the little niggles that have to be solved prior to production. We are really learning the 90-90 rule: the first 90% of a project takes 90% of the allotted time, and the last 10% of the project takes the other 90% :-) So here is a list of developments for many of the various elements that go into making the Quadshot: Legalese Much as we would prefer to only have to deal with engineering, the unfortunate fact is that we had to spend time...
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Mar 03, 2016
Quick Update
Quick Update: Mocha: Airframe assembly and testing continues - we’ve now put Lia brains into the first 20 Mochas, and are testing them individually to make sure we did everything right :-) Most excitingly, we have shipped the first ones! We will be shipping them out in the order they were pledged. Espresso: We received the Lisa/Ms and Aspirins with the new barometric pressure sensors, and Piotr got them all flashed, soldered together, serialized, and tested: We shipped out the first 18 Espressos and first Mocha (lower left) on Wednesday the 25th: Unfortunately, we are now hearing that we forgot...