X1Plus Expander e-mail receivers,
Last time I wrote to you, the situation in terms of boxes accumulating in my house was getting bad. I did not know nearly how bad it was going to get. Friends, I have now a really strong incentive to get things out the door. I wanted to give you a quick update as to things that have been rolling in.
First things first: if your address has changed since you placed your order, now’s a good time to update your Crowd Supply account details! Updating your shipping address helps avoid delays and gets your orders delivered successfully to you. Once your order details have been sent out by our warehouse team for processing, it can be hard or impossible to re-route a shipment. Please contact Crowd Supply Support with any shipping questions or concerns.
Ok, now here’s what’s going on!
Boxes Become Boxes
I’m still not showing you pictures of the box because I’m so excited about it and I just want you to see it when it arrives. But four large cartons from Box Genie arrived with 700 boxes in them, and then I had to start folding them, and I thought "Oh my god, my life is bad". So, like any good engineer, I searched the Internet to see how real people solve this problem and I came across these guys who would make a custom box folding jig, but gosh I did not want to pay for one of those (or wait for it).
But, of course, because I am completely incapable of not making projects to go with my projects that go with my projects, I figured "You know, I bet I could make that", and then proceeded to spend about three hours in Onshape, and to come up with, uh… this:
Anyway, it does work! And so there you go.
Instructions Become Safe
A much smaller box arrived! This one came with 700 copies of the Instructions for Safe Use, as required by EU law.
Just In: Case
An extremely expensive box then arrived! This box contained about 100 SLS-printed cases from JLCPCB. Unfortunately, it arrived on April 10th, and I ended up paying about $1,400 in tariffs and fees on about $900 in cases. I’m eating the cost because I love you all (and also because I promised and budgeted for this kind of thing). But, ouch.
The annoying news is that the yield on those was also kind of crappy — about 15% of them were unusably warped. But the good news is that I found some Hungarians who will do SLS printing for about the same price as JLC! They are very friendly and, also, they have a much lower tariff load right now. So I just placed an order for another 100 cases from them, and we’ll see what the yield is like — their production samples were good.
Peanut Offers A Gift
Peanut, the cat, told me that she needed to be involved, too, if her house was going to be overrun like this.
She reliably brings a ping pong ball to my bedside most evenings (usually with quite some yowling to go with it and usually half an hour after I turn out the lights…), so I think she is saying she wants to give you a gift too. Accordingly, a ping pong ball will be in every box.
Boxes Leave Soon
Oh, right, where were we? I was supposed to, um, ship you your goodies, right? I guess I’d better get on that. Here’s what I have packed and labeled so far:
- All of the andon modules are tested, labeled, and packed.
- All of the shutter release modules are tested, labeled, and packed.
- About 100 LED level shifters are tested, labeled, and packed.
- About 80 cases are labeled and packed.
- About 45 Expander mainboards are tested, labeled and packed.
I prioritized getting the modules done first so that as soon as I started sending mainboards out, they would go out in the right-ish order. (Also, I can send modules out before the software is fully ready… I have been burning a lot of midnight oil on the software and it is getting really close, but it’s not done yet.)
I’m planning to get at least the andons, shutter releases, level shifters, and cases in the mail this week, and if the software is looking good, I’d be absolutely overjoyed to start delivering Expander mainboards, too. I’m leaving on Saturday for a work trip to Shenzhen for a week and so, hopefully, the time I’m away will give Mouser time to process the shipment and tell me if I screwed anything up in the packing lists, just in time that I can correct it for the next shipments once I get home.
Talk soon,
joshua