blerg erg. i wish i could give a hard date, but every step in this production process has been an exercise in bug-fixing at a process level with multiple rounds of attempts at solutions. in retrospect i almost certainly should not have added the coloring step for this first try. unfortunately, i also think that my latest try at the gasket formulation is not working out well. i'll check in with the producer next week. in retrospect i got a tad too ambitious. once the results of this LAST round of experiments comes in, i will announce the final production details.
in detail:
- soft gasket squeezes out more and is more prone to being damaged, so i asked for a harder formulation with a ptfe coating. if this feels like it won't wear well to me, i'll have vinyl gasket protectors cut. i suspect this is less dire than it has been made out to be though, the original sample that vibex found the bug in was pretty far from the gaskets we're going to get.
- the plates are going to be 'painted' instead of being anodized. the paint is a ceramic coating commonly used on guns. we should be able to match the anodize colors with more translucency. i'm going to give the painter some latitude on this one, as i trust her completely to deliver.
- fastener and pcb lead-time is short. i can decrease gasket lead time by paying for more molds, especially after we nail the formulation. thankfully, i made slightly fewer molds than they originally wanted me to make just in case, so this won't be a deal killer. the material is finally cut (long story short, spaceX had a launch deadline..), so working out coloring is next.
- i may have boilermaker sort a few hundred thousand diodes while we're waiting for all of this to happen.
huge apologies to everyone for how long this has taken. when i started this, i had no idea what was going to happen in my life (3 moves in 3 months, the last across the country!) and had to drop off the face of the earth for a couple of those months to keep my sanity.
in retrospect the ultimate size of this ended up being the issue. i expected to move maybe 20 units, and it ended up being nearly 80. it's a lot easier to do experimental production of 20 units of product than 80
. just ask spacex (we share a pretty crucial shop for me :O)