Hey y’all, it’s another month. The cold is finally here in Ontario. I’m actually wrapping up this update in Guangzhou, which is nice and warm, but I won’t be staying here for too long unfortunately.
Also, thank you for all of the recent growth in viewership in the production update videos in the Youtube channel! We hit 10K views in the first week for our last update.
Making improvements to our customer service process
One of the new things we’re focusing on is in improving our customer service process. A big component of this is the availability of new AI tools and new members joining our team to continue to make our overall customer experience better.
Some objectives for the coming months include:
- Extending our hours for email and phone call support from our core hours to include after hours support
- Bringing on new staff for technical writing and one on one support
- Development of in person and virtual training
- Leveraging user research to understand pain points, and adapt resources to prioritize content that helps users the most
With a lot of companies, customer success is an after thought, and most aim to make it difficult to get support to reduce costs. We understand it’s a core part of the value that you get from making a purchase, which is why our objective is to maximize your access to us, information, and resources so that we can improve customer experience and minimize downtime.
LongMill MK3 CAD files now available
We have now made the files for the LongMill MK3 open source. You can now explore, modify, and download files from Onshape. We hope you enjoy!
https://resources.sienci.com/view/lmk3-open-source
Why do these open-source files exist? They are for people who want to look at our design and want to make changes, improvements, or modifications. We also make them available in case people need to make their own replacement parts. Lastly, if, for whatever reason, we cease to exist, these files should be available so that people can maintain their machines -we don’t expect this to happen of course, but it’s there just in case.
Updating software partnerships with Vectric, Carveco, Fusion and LightBurn/MillMage in the works
Nathan and the marketing team have been working hard connecting with some of our software providers to establish some new programs and relationships. We’ll have more info and announcements coming up as we nail things down and update the website, but some of the things you might expect to see include:
- Technology partnerships to help develop plugins and add-ons to software
- Release of new software
- Exclusive pricing and deals
- New training content and tutorials for different software platforms
This also coincides with some new folks joining our team to help with software and design education, which we haven’t announced in detail yet but will also be coming down the pipeline.
Want to see all of the software options listed on our store? Check out: https://sienci.com/product-category/cad-cam-software/
General production and lead times
As we discussed in our previous updates, we’ve continued to put in processes to improve our lead times. We’re happy to say that we’ve been able to keep to our timelines for the most part, with the exception of the AltMill 2×4 and 4×4, for which we have recently updated the lead times from 1 week to 2 weeks. I’ve done my best to put together the closest approximation to our ability to ship on time with this diagram.
Here’s the shipments for October. Note we removed some outlier ones, such as orders that have been asked to be put on hold for customers.
| Product family | Included shipments | Average number of days until shipping | Lead time in days | Shipped by workbook estimate |
| AltMill 2×4 and 4×4 | 75 | 12.4 days | 14 days | 32 / 75 (43%) |
| LongMill MK3 | 85 | 20.5 days* | 14 days | 78 / 80 (98%) |
| AltMill 4×8 | 35 | 26.9 days | 28 days | 22 / 35 (63%) |
*Note that the lead time for the LongMill MK3 was adjusted this past month from 6 weeks to 2 weeks. Orders that shipped within the estimated timespan are considered shipped on time.
The following shows how many shipments were delayed and how many days they were typically delayed by.
| Product family | Late shipments | Median delay | Average delay |
|---|---|---|---|
| AltMill 2×4 and 4×4 | 43 | 7 days | 6.9 days |
| AltMill 4×8 | 13 | 6 days | 6.1 days |
| LongMill MK3 | 2 | 2.5 days | 2.5 days |
Demand for products continues to fluctuate, and we are continuously monitoring our shipping estimates and delivery timelines to provide the most accurate information possible.
LongMill MK3
LongMill MK3s in the queue have all been shipped and we are now fulfilling orders as they come. We have decreased our lead times from 6 weeks to 2 weeks, with most machines currently shipping sooner. We are expecting to continue to adjust lead times as we ramp up production.
Vacuum Table
Development of the vacuum table system is largely complete and we are working on final parts of the product, such as packaging drop testing, wear testing, and assembly jigging for production. Another main area of work is estimating costs for freighting; the vacuum pump component from BlackBox is expected to require some more specialized shipping due to its size and weight.
There’s still work to be done for the release, but we are aiming for a mid-November launch date.
Closed-Loop Stepper Motor Kit
The Closed-Loop Stepper Motor Kit for upgrading the LongMill MK2 and MK2.5 to closed-loop stepper motor electronics has been updated to match the same electronics as the LongMill MK3. This means that the kit comes with optimized cabling, power supply, and the new SLB-LITE.
gControl LITE
As we were talking about in the last update, we’ve continued to work on the new version of gControl. In fact, the reason I’m in China right now is to meet some manufacturers.
AltMill power supplies for the Ontario market
We are currently moving our expected release for the new, certified power supplies for the Ontario market from December to early January.
Here’s the message from our engineering project manager Liz: “Sample extrusions for the power supply were just ordered, they should arrive by Nov 13. We will be testing the production samples in-house to ensure functionality and quality, this should take ~1 week. Once we complete our in-house testing, assembly can begin on the full batch of power supplies. While manufacturing is ongoing in China, we will be using the production samples for certification here in Canada. Certification with Intertek should take between 4-6 weeks to complete. And while the report is being compiled, the full batch of power supplies ordered will be on its way to us.”
A large batch of power supplies has already been ordered, so once certified, we can start preparing to get these out the door. We’ll continue to keep everyone posted with updates as we complete the certification process.
We apologize to any Ontario customers still waiting to place an order for their machine.
Sienci Labs developed CAM software is coming
This is actually super big news coinciding with a ton of other new development that’s been in the works with gSender and further improvements and integrations is the development of new CAM software!
As you guys know, making CNC more accessible and easy to use continues to be our mission, and CAM has been one of the big things we’ve always wanted to explore. However, the reality was that we didn’t have the money or the resources to do the development at scale. But with our growing software development team, we’ve been able to first, greatly advance gSender, and now work on new version of easy to use but capable CAM software.
What we hope to accomplish is to create a simple but powerful CAM software that people can do 90% of their projects with. While at this point we don’t aim to pursue any super advanced functionality, we want something that people can turn to for their day to day work.
We are now conducting in-house beta testing with our staff to evaluate updates and changes to the software before we release it to the public for further testing. Make sure to keep an eye out for more news!
Maybe something that the folks can comment on is: what would be a way that we can keep this type of project sustainable? Ultimately, we want to make things as inexpensive as possible, but we do have a lot of engineers to pay and keep fed. Would you pay money for this type of thing? If so, how much? Or, can we find a way to keep machine sales up enough to a point where it can cover the cost of the software? Let us know your thoughts.