As the ETA draws near, everyone is working at maximum effort to get Polaris to ship.
At this time, we have good news and bad news.
Good news: The QC of the boards has progressed quickly, and some of the checked boards are already moving to packaging. The QC team led by Kevinplus worked for an entire week morning to evening to get this done; they’re the powerful people keeping Polaris moving towards shipment.
Bad news 1: The FR4 plates had the switch cutouts cut 1mm narrower than needed due to an unpredictable data misunderstanding, rendering them useless since the switches do not fit. These will need to be reproduced; however, the factory has already closed orders in preparation for the upcoming Chinese New Year, and production cannot begin until after the holiday.
Bad news 2: Although the factory has been churning out Polaris at top speed, a few things have fallen behind schedule. Some parts have been needed to be remade to meet quality requirements, and as fast as the QC team led by Kevinplus is, inspecting so many boards is taking longer than originally planned.
Bad news 3: The very tarnish-resistant clear PVD brass is showing some issues the factory just cannot get rid of, such as slightly shiny edges, a bit of discoloration, or small hook marks. They’ve tried redoing it many times, but it wasn’t solved, so we’ve had to settle for picking out the better ones out of the batch. Unfortunately this means that some of the clear PVD brass parts will not be perfect; we will upload photos later of what we had to settle on to meet the quantity requirements.
Due to the situation of the parts, and the fact that the Chinese New Year is coming up very soon, it would require a lot of rushing to do the final sorting and packing at the KBDfans warehouse for the boards which have passed QC. This could result in order mix-ups and parts placed in the wrong boxes, so for the sake of getting things out properly rather than rushing and being disappointed for the duration of the holiday, we have decided it is safer to carefully sort and double-check all boards’ contents until after CNY, then ship the ready units very soon after, followed by the delayed boards as soon as they are ready. This means all boards will be delayed until after the Chinese New Year holiday, with differing delays depending on the parts and/or QC batch.
I apologize for the inconveniences, and thank you for your understanding.
I will post any further updates as they arrive, especially for the parts which are still underway.
ai03 on behalf of myself, Kevinplus, Polaris production team