*Very important: If you are a customer looking to order a LongMill this month, please read this part carefully.
Due to low stock and high demand, our lead times for the LongMill are now extended to 4-6 weeks. New orders will not ship before Christmas. We are now limiting stock and customers may not be able to order once we go out of stock on our machines. A pre-order page for the LongMill MK2, the new version of the LongMill is scheduled to be available at the end of December, and orders for the LongMill MK2 will ship at the start of February. The new LongMill will have adjusted pricing that will be released at a later date, but are estimated to be around $1800CAD for the 30×30 version.
If you are interested in learning more about the differences between the MK2 and the original version of the LongMill, please read our development posts from our blog here: https://sienci.com/?s=longmill+MK2. More information will come soon.
Because of our shortage of parts, new orders (starting Dec 10, 2021) will start to use some of the parts that may have cosmetic defects on gantry plates and rails which do not affect the overall performance and use of the machine. We expect most customers to not even notice the cosmetic defects. All machines will come with the same high quality customer service and technical support, as well as the standard 90 day warranty.
Also, not all parts will have a cosmetic defect, as you may, for example, have a cosmetically perfect set of rails and one gantry that has a scratch. All parts are carefully inspected before being packed and shipped.
Some examples of scratches, dents, and other cosmetic dings
Every rail we ship out gets checked for:
Dimensional accuracy
Dings and dents that may impede with the travel of the v-wheels along the edge
Cosmetic damage
While the first two criteria are critical to making sure that the LongMill works, cosmetic damage along the sides and inside of the rail does not impact the performance and functionality of the machine. Rails that were rejected due to cosmetic damage but not from the first two criteria would be used in this version of the machine.
Every gantry plate gets checked for:
Paint defects, such as chipping and orange peel
Gouges and scratches
Uneven paint
Plates, such as the one shown above show orange peeling and would be rejected in production. This may be caused by contamination on the plate surface before coating, but overall does not affect the use and performance of the machine.
Why did we make this decision?
Our goal is to use the remaining stock of rails and gantries to bridge the gap between when we’ll be able to restock on parts again in January and February. Between each batch of production, we’ve kept our functional but cosmetically imperfect parts in storage. Using up these parts will help us use excess materials and clear out space for new inventory, as well as keep our lead times lower.
This is actually not the first time we’ve done this. On some rare occasions where we run out of a part and are waiting to restock, we’ve asked customers if we can provide them with imperfect parts, and all of our customers preferred to get their machine a week or two earlier, rather than wait till the new parts arrived.
Although we have considered remaking or repainting the rest of the parts, this would extend the lead time significantly, as new parts can take upwards of 8 weeks to produce. Instead, we figured we would let the customer know that some of their LongMill parts may be cosmetically imperfect, and let them make the decision at purchase.
LongMill MK2 Production
We’ve slowly started to gather parts for the production of the LongMill MK2. In our last update, we talked about the extended lead times for the MK2’s aluminum rails. It just happens that Almag was able to rush order the rails and have them dropped off a lot earlier than expected. Yay!
On top of this, we have also received full or partial shipments of:
Linear guides
Lead screws
Fasteners
Delrin nuts
Z motor mounts
Drag chains
There are still a lot of parts that are in transit and production, such as:
Control boards
Power supplies
Motors
Couplers
Packaging materials
We are crossing our fingers that these parts will arrive by the end of December or early January.
Holiday schedule and office closures
Please note that our offices will be closed from Dec 24th to Jan 3rd. We will be back in action and shipping again on Jan 4th.
If you have any orders that need to be shipped out before the holidays, please place your orders before Dec 23rd so that they can be shipped out before we close.
Over the past few weeks we have finalized our design for the driver case, air assist and laser shield. We have placed an order with a local PCB manufacturer, and they are on track to complete our laser driver PCB December 17th. Our focus now is to have all parts packed and assembled so that when the driver PCBs arrive, it will be the only part of the laser to assemble, pack and we can begin shipping.
The specific milestones below have been completed since the last update:
Ordered our driver PCB Assemblies in bulk
Finalized our design for the driver case, air assist and laser shield and begun production on these parts
Completed FDA submission documents
The roadmap for the rest of the month is as follows:
Receive completed driver PCBs [Dec 17th]
Test drivers [Dec 18th-19th]
Begin driver assembly and shipping [Dec 20th-23rd], shipping out our first 300 LaserBeam pre-orders
Next Tasks
Regulations
Our FDA submission documents are being reviewed and will be sent out December 13th
Production
Get final packaging foam prototyped and cut
Continue 3D printing and laser cutting parts
Assembly
We have assembled 300 laser diode assemblies (which includes the heatsinks and laser diode, not the driver)
We have received our steel laser mounts and will assemble to the laser diode assembly with compliant safety and product stickers
Assemble the PWM signal cable, the last cables to be assembled
Check out the link above if you need to order additional LaserBeam accessories that you didn’t order in your original LaserBeam preorder. You won’t be charged any additional shipping and your order will be combined with your LaserBeam Pre order!
Check out our LaserBeam FAQ video, I take all your unanswered questions from the LaserBeam livestream and try to give you guys more clarity on the LaserBeam add on.
Stay up to date by signing up for our mailing list
Hey everyone, we’ve been getting a lot of calls, emails, and messages asking if we’re planning on doing any Black Friday Sales. Unfortunately for this year, there will be no Black Friday discounts. Due to extremely high and growing demand for the LongMill, as well as overall shortages and challenges in the supply chain, we believe that offering any sales or discounts at this time will further overwhelm our production and packaging.
Thank you everyone for their continued patience and support!
For additional info about our company and production, please feel free to check out our Production Updates: https://sienci.com/2021/11/17/november-production-update-pt-2/
These past couple of weeks has been a bit stressful, as we continue to deal with delays in supply chain. I’m happy to announce that the new control boards that we’d been waiting on in the last update have finally arrived and we have started shipping machines again. We expect to get through the backlog over the next couple of weeks.
We also now have touch plates back in stock as well.
The end of Batch 5 is coming
We are quickly reaching the end of Batch 5, and expect to be out of stock on Batch 5 machines in around 3 to 4 weeks. Customers should expect lead times for machines to get much longer as we work on parts for Batch 6 to finish.
If you aren’t familiar, we build machines in batches. In this case, Batch 5 is 1000 machines.
In the meantime, there are a few things we can continue to do, such as extending Batch 5 by balancing the inventory and using all of the leftover parts and hardware to keep making kits beyond 1000 machines. This could also mean pulling inventory coming in for Batch 6 to use for Batch 5, as we wait for all of the Batch 6 parts to arrive.
Once we get closer to the end of Batch 5, customers should expect lead times to go up, possibly to 4-6 weeks.
Current supply chain and production issues
One of the major hurdles we’re currently dealing with is the long lead times with aluminum extrusions. With our current manufacturer, we’ve jumped from a 2 week lead time to 13 week lead time between September and November, meaning that our order for rails placed this month is expected to complete sometime between January and February. I’ve “rush ordered” these parts so that we try to have them in stock by the start of January, but this all comes down to scheduling at the press. I’ve also reached out to other presses in the area, but most have even longer lead times.
To account for the unstable lead times, we’ve been working on installing our own cutting and tapping set up to cut and tap our own rails. This should allow us to have more control over the lead times, as we don’t have to worry about the extra machining time that the manufacturers need to have added on top of the total production time.
Our new saw
In other news, we are likely going to see gaps in shipping based on shipping delays. For example, although we have allocated the v-wheels for the machines in Batch 5 for pending orders, the batch that we are waiting for to be able to complete the batch have been delayed in transit for about 2 weeks. Although I expect to see the wheels before we finish shipping the pending orders, any additional delays may cause a gap in shipping again as well for new customers.
Lastly, lead times for cardboard packaging have gone from a few weeks to around 10 weeks now, which means that we’ve started working early on manufacturing the packaging for Batch 6 machines.
All in all, although we are doing our best to keep production going, customers should expect longer lead times on LongMills.
We have received our rough report from the testing facility and our main product design has successfully passed as a laser component. In order to qualify as a laser component, we had to remove continuous maximum power mode, which makes the LaserBeam reliant on the PWM signal that comes from the Longmill controller. Thus the driver design is officially completed!
The specific milestones below have been completed:
Pass IEC 60825-1 tests
Receive testing report
Next Tasks
Supply Chain and Regulations
Place an order with a local PCB manufacturer to make and assemble board components with short lead time
File all reports with the FDA (we do not need to wait for report review before shipping out lasers)
Design
Finalize the design for the driver case and air assist
To increase user safety, we plan to design a simple laser shield that can help avoid laser radiation from interacting with the user
Assembly
Currently assembling our laser diode, heat sinks and cooling fan
Then will finish adding connectors to the driver fan, laser assembly and laser diode extension cable
Check out the link above if you need to order additional LaserBeam accessories that you didn’t order in your original LaserBeam preorder. You won’t be charged any additional shipping and your order will be combined with your LaserBeam Pre order!
Check out our LaserBeam FAQ video, I take all your unanswered questions from the LaserBeam livestream and try to give you guys more clarity on the LaserBeam add on.
Stay up to date by signing up for our mailing list
On November 2nd we sent off our 7W LaserBeam product for independent testing. With the help of the test project coordinator, we will ensure that our product meets all Class 4 laser product requirements. That could mean making changes to the driver design and/or improving our safety/user manual.
Next Tasks
Safety and User Manual
While we wait to hear back from the test project coordinator we will continue to have our packers assemble parts that we are confident in, and would not be affected by the results of the testing.
Parts to assemble:
Laser diode extension cord
PWM signal cord
Laser diode heat sink assembly
Laser cooling fan
As we wait for updates from the independent testing facility, we will continue to plan ahead for Batch 2, to avoid future delays in shipping. Batch 1 includes the first 300 pre-orders, scheduled to deliver by end of the year.
Supply chain tasks:
We will be upgrading our acrylic router mount to zinc plated 10GA sheet metal
This will further reduce any vibrations that come from the laser cooling fan or LongMill movement
We will begin ordering more parts for Batch 2 of the LaserBeam production, which should take 1-2 weeks
Copper heat sinks
Safety glasses
A/C power cables
Laser diodes
Once the Laserbeam passes testing, we can order the driver PCBs
Check out the link above if you need to order additional LaserBeam accessories that you didn’t order in your original LaserBeam preorder. You won’t be charged any additional shipping and your order will be combined with your LaserBeam Pre order!
Check out our LaserBeam FAQ video, I take all your unanswered questions from the LaserBeam livestream and try to give you guys more clarity on the LaserBeam add on.
Stay up to date by signing up for our mailing list
Hey everyone. Thanks for following along in the development of our new generation of CNC machines.
One of our first prototype machines in a 30×30 form factor
As we discussed in our previous blog posts, we’ve been working on making our own custom extrusions for a new generation of LongMills. Just to recap, here are some of the improvements that the new extrusions should bring:
Improved weight to rigidity, as well as improved rigidity overall
Lower number of parts and overall ease of assembly
Ability to extend the working area beyond 30×30 inches
We’re excited to share that we’ve put together our first machine with the new parts and gantries to make a fully working prototype. We’re really happy with the way it’s come together as well as the overall fit and finish of the machine. Now that we’re at this stage, we have a couple more steps towards launching the product.
Beta testing the MK2 30×30
Now that we have parts ready for the 30×30 version of the LongMill MK2, we are looking for beta testers to test the machine between November 2021 and Jan 2022. We are looking to get beta testers set up with machines as soon as possible. If you want to sign up as a beta tester (only for the 30×30 model, you can fill out the form here:
Beta testing involves the process of testing and using a product in a real-world environment before mass production or general release. In our case, the LongMill MK2 platform is a new product that has been active in development. While we are confident in the performance of the new machines, we feel that it is important to get it into the hands of real users to obtain feedback and information about how well the machine performs, how it works, and potential issues that may happen in manufacturing and production of the final product. We also want to identify users and use cases for the product to help us target our machines to the right people based on what you do during the beta testing period.
As a beta tester, your responsibilities are:
Put your beta machine through the paces
Report back to us with feedback on a regular basis
Let us observe and test your machine
Share your learnings and testing with the community
As the company providing the beta machine, our responsibilities are:
Provide you with one-on-one technical support for your machine
Help you set up your machine (either in person or virtually)
Provide you with updated parts to ensure your machine aligns closely with the final production version
There are several differences that you may see between the beta testing machines and production machines.
Some parts will be uncoated, such as the gantry plates and aluminum parts
Machines will either be partially assembled or come in non-production ready packaging
Some parts may be off the shelf components not from our regular manufacturers
Once beta testing is complete and we begin production for completed units, we will provide you with updated parts to bring you to spec with production machines.
Pricing
We charge for our beta testing machines. We believe that is the best way in vetting between folks that are purely looking for a discounted or free machine and folks who truly need or want a machine. It is our top priority to work with beta testers that will find true value from owning a CNC machine and using it long-term. We ask beta testers to ask themselves “if this was a product I could buy now, would it bring enough value to me to warrant the amount I would pay?”.
If you’d like to hear some interviews from our former beta testers, please check out our channel here:
The LongMill MK2 30×30 serves as the successor to the original LongMill that we started shipping in late 2019. This version of the machine offers simpler, but more rigid construction, and is a great entry into the world of hobby CNCing.
Pricing:
The pricing for the beta LongMill MK2 30×30 will be $1500CAD, plus applicable taxes.
The production price will be $1800CAD at the time of release.
What you get:
A full, LongMill MK2 machine with a working area of 30×30 inches
Our one-on-one technical support and set up assistance
Parts to upgrade your machine to production level spec at release
Talking about the now (and the later)…
I’d like to talk about customer perception and management of the release of a new product. The elephant in the (my) room, is the fact that while the LongMill in its current state is awesome, the new one is going to be even more awesome. If you are an older customer, I’m hoping that you’ve been enjoying using your machine and feel that you’ve gotten the value out of your machine. For new customers, I suspect that some folks are either possibly feeling that 1) maybe they should have waited to get the new version 2) worried about losing support on the current version.
To address the first concern, the reality is that as time goes on, our machines are going to get better. Even between the first generation of machines, we’ve made a lot of changes to make the machines better. The machines that we ship today have many changes and improvements, and we pride ourselves to build the best machines at reasonable prices. The point is, if you use this logic forever, you’ll also be waiting forever to get a machine. The real question should be, is this the best time for me to get a CNC machine?
We also have to talk about the change in price. The original LongMill 30×30’s base price is $1500CAD. The new one will be $1800CAD. We are increasing the price of the machine for a couple of reasons.
First of all, we need to address increasing costs, inflation, and instability in prices over the last two years. We have not increased the price of the LongMill since 2019. We also have not increased the price on most of our parts, consumables, and other items we sell. Because of our growth, we’ve been able to keep prices for our customers the same while being able to negotiate lower prices with our suppliers due to our economies of scale, we no longer see better cost breakdowns at our scale to significantly make up for lost margin of prices going up. We also continue to increase the pay and benefits of our staff. We believe in providing an excellent workplace environment and reasonable pay, but we also need to account for these costs as well. The $300 difference addresses the increased costs of the materials that go into production and ensure that we have the profits to pay our employees well.
Second, the price difference accounts for the performance difference between the two machines. The MK2 is a more rigid machine, and it costs more to make. At this point, we offer a bit of a choice between the two machines with their respective price points.
And lastly, when customers choose to purchase from us, Sienci Labs, they are also investing in our company and the development of new technologies and products. For example, a bit portion of our profits go towards building and supporting gSender, which now is open for use for free for all hobby CNC users. We also have a bunch of other cool stuff coming down the pipeline that the money goes towards to as well. We want to make sure our pricing is in line where these developments are sustainable in the long term and we can provide our team with the funding needed.
To address the second concern, we’ve made a lot of the two machines inter-compatible and backwards compatible. I go into a lot more detail in the last blog post: https://sienci.com/2021/10/15/altmill-and-longmill-survey-results-and-development-progress/, as I cover more pros and cons of this change. Wear components, such as v-wheels, ACME nuts are the same across both machines, and both machines also share the same electronics, power supplies, bearings, linear guides, motors, locking nuts, couplers, and more. We will have parts and services available for both generations of machines, as well as a stockpile of parts on hand. We can also make 3D printed components as needed, so we don’t expect any issues there either. Since the underlying software and electronics remain the same as well, all of our software will continue to be developed with both machines in mind.
To also note, for some people who might be wondering, making a dedicated kit to swap out rails and gantries to change a current LongMill to a MK2 is not our priority. We don’t think the extra cost doesn’t justify the real-life increase in performance, we don’t want to create a lot of extra waste, and if a machine is already assembled, most of the benefits that come with the faster/easier assembly is never realized (since you have to take apart and reassemble a machine). We will still offer individual parts on our store for customers (as we already do), so folks can make up their own mind. I’d also like to note that there WILL be a kit to use the original LongMill and add a longer X-axis (48×30 in the working area).
So in conclusion, if the LongMill at its current design and price point works for you, and you’re thinking of ordering a machine, this is a great time to do so. If you want a bit more rigidity and have a larger budget, the MK2 may be the better option. But regardless, you’ll still be getting a fantastic machine, and I would recommend making your decision based on your personal timing of when you want to get into CNCing.
Availability
The LongMill MK2 30×30 is expected to launch in mid to late January 2022. Pricing for the 30×30 model will be $1800CAD.
Please stay tuned for when orders will open up, and pricing for other size models.
It’s not often I post here, most often it’s Andy or Kelly keeping y’all up to date on the status of things happening here at Sienci Labs Headquarters; I’m much more behind-the-scenes. Today I’ve come out of the woodwork for a very exciting and momentous announcement for us, the release of gSender 1.0.
Since much of gSenders development hasn’t made much of an appearance on the company blog, let me bring you up to speed on where this project started and what the release to 1.0 now means:
Origin
Back in 2016 when Andy and I first started Sienci Labs around our Mill One CNC, the range of free and paid g-code senders specific to operating hobby CNCs was surprising wide. Options like UGS and Candle were quite widely used and more were in active development at the time such as UGSPlatform, CNCjs, bCNC, and more. We were able to make a wide range of recommendations to our CNC users as well as made documentation around specifically UGS at the time since we felt it was the most intuitive to use.
Jumping to 2020 we’ve now got more machines in the wild then ever before. If you’re familiar with working at scale, you know that a 5% failure rate, for example, is very manageable when you’re working in the hundreds but starts to be more of a headache in the thousands. This is what we were starting to encounter with the g-code senders available at the time. And I’ll clarify, when I say “failure rate” this isn’t me saying that the software didn’t work. There were outlying bugs, quirks, and stable versions that were more stable than others; but what also stuck out was that many of the available options were made for more technically savvy people.
What were our options?
With more and more calls coming in, we could tell our users were getting confused with existing sender options. We heard questions about basic functions, confusion about behaviour, and one of the hardest things for us to hear was that our users were blaming the functionality and abilities of our CNCs in cases where we knew it was coming down to the sender. I remember personally dealing with situations of broken bits because of probing operations, or even a time I remember vividly where I helped someone out for a whole hour over the phone because he thought his file was visualizing correctly and we found that he’d just accidentally closed the visualization window within the sender.
I want to make it clear that I have the utmost respect and thanks for all those who took the time to make their own g-code senders for hobby use. These contributors to the hobby CNC community as a whole have taken the time to take what would otherwise be a personal project and have released it for the world to use. Not only that, but they continue to support updates, bug fixes, new features, and much more – all on their own time and out of the passion that they themselves have for CNC. But ultimately, the origin of these projects is what made me realize around that time that the goals of these open-source projects were never going to meet the goals that Andy and I have always had for the company: to make CNC routing fully accessible to the public. As long as open-source developers were at the helm, customization and a diverse range of features would take priority over UI design, streamlined use, and catering towards beginners by using more understandable language.
This left us with two options. Either we help fund an existing project or put more man-power toward it and get it moving in the direction we felt would be best for the next generation of g-code sender, or we begin making our own. I sent some emails around, and spoke with some other developers I knew and the consensus was that we’d go with the latter. Seeing as these projects were the ‘babies’ of each respective group of open-source developers, we felt it wouldn’t be our place to ask for more from people who wanted to do development on their own schedule, or try to push our vision onto others. Thus gSender was begun.
Goals and Principals of gSender
Starting ideation in October 2020, we began testing existing senders and outlined our core goals and design principals that we felt would guide development:
Goals
Act as new default machine interface / sender for LongMill customers (this means including all the functions and features that users are already used to from there existing sending options)
Supercharge our customers’ experience with their LongMill by streamlining / simplifying machine interaction and making even more machine operations easily available (a.k.a. nice-to-haves)
Keep design open for use by other hobby CNCers to provide benefit outside of just our own community (this means leaving some wiggle room for broader customization and adaptability to other CNC machines on the market as well as even further advanced features)
Principals
If it’s set once it doesn’t need to be visible 100% of the time
Options most users don’t need should not be obvious or take up much screen real estate
Most actions should be 1 click
“Someone off the street should be able to figure out how to get started”
Order of widgets should be close to order of operations/steps to proceed
Machine state should be obvious at a glance
Use colour patterns to subconsciously communicate button functions
Substitute CNC jargon with simple language when possible
We knew the other primary holes we wanted to fill roughly included:
Easy interface for beginners yet advanced features available for more experienced hobbyists
Smart handling of error cases, probing, jogging, firmware editing, machine connection, etc.
Built-in tools for convenient CNC management: stock/wasteboard flattening, motor calibration, machine squaring, etc.
Extensive keymapping and built-in joystick compatibility
Support of tool changing, start/stop g-code, macros, coding variables
The idea was to branch off of the well-known and provably reliable open-source codebase so we could be confident that we were starting with a good foundation to build off of. We also wanted the software to be made available easily for all systems so that future implementations could support standalone machines. After a wide range of tests performed over many weeks, CNCjs’ codebase was chosen for the previous reasons and because testing showed reliable operation on a variety of computer systems.
Present Day Release
I’m very excited to announce that gSender 1.0 is now available for free to anyone who wants it!
After nearly a year in development, the first couple months being in Alpha and the remaining ones being in BETA, we’ve now become confident enough to declare our first reliable version. We’re really excited to see more people begin to use it as we’ve now got a whole swath of great features and about 2000 users using it to run jobs every day.
Some things that you can expect from gSender in its current state:
Reliability of operation
Accommodates a wide range of computing systems via its ‘Lightweight mode’
Easy to understand and use due to its interface layout
Takes care of a lot of complexities behind the scenes, making mistakes and errors less likely and easier to deal with when they do happen
Built-in tools for surfacing, machine calibration, firmware editing
Ability to ‘start from line’, tool change, run custom macros, quick-travel with limit switches, and much more
If you’d like to learn more, we’ve got a primary download page, a documentation area, our full Github page, a discussion forum, and even though we’ve reached 1.0 we’ll still be releasing new dev builds for the foreseeable future as we continue development on gSender:
The team and I are very excited that we’ve reached this point. We set out to make our very own open-source and FREE g-code sender after gaining inspiration from some of the other commonly available options and we feel we’ve made a strong start towards those goals. To get here we owe a huge amount of thanks to our original 10 Alpha testers (you know who you are 😉 ), all those who participated in BETA testing and sending us suggestions and feedback, and importantly our greatest thanks to Will Winder and Cheton Wu for driving the UGS and CNCjs projects that not only were there for our initial users but also acted as a indispensable step towards us embarking on this project ourselves.
We want gSender to be the next-level open-source sender that’s available for all green CNCers to turn to whether they own a LongMill or otherwise: guided and easy to approach as a beginner yet customizable and feature-rich for higher-tier hobby CNCers. This means that it not only works for our Mill One and LongMill CNCs, but has already been proven to work on other machines like X-Carve, Shapeoko, Bob’s CNC, 3018, PROVer, and many more!
If you’re interested, the full list of features up to this point is as follows 😀 :
3-axis digital readout (DRO) with manual value entry
All-directional jogging with XY diagonals, jog presets, and incremental/continuous single-button handling
Zero-setting and gotos (independent and combined)
Probing in any direction plus safe continuity detection ensures no broken cutting tools
Full imperial/metric compatibility
Responsive screen design and workspace customizations including visualizer light and dark theme
3D toolpath visualization (no machine connection required)
File insight on load (feed range, spindle range, tools used, estimated cutting time, and overall, max, and min dimensions)
Feed override and active job status indicators
Fully exposed keyboard shortcuts for external keyboard/keypad control
Joystick support built-in for a variety of controllers
Safe height movements – accommodates machines with or without endstops
Homing cycle and quick-movement locations available for machines with homing hardware
Full spindle/laser support via manual control widgets, active alerting, and live overrides
Full mist/flood coolant support via manual control widgets and active alerting
Macros buttons (rearrangeable) with enhanced macro variables and individually assignable keyboard shortcuts
Lightweight mode reduces processing intensity on less powerful hardware or when running larger files
Easy workspace swapping for more advanced jigging or alignment work
Optional automatic handling for common error throwing g-code
Firmware tool for easier GRBL EEPROM changes, loading defaults, and GRBL flashing
Surfacing tool auto-generates surfacing g-code based on machine cutting area and other preferences, ready to execute
Calibration tool for axis alignment – a step by step process to make sure your CNC is square
Movement tuning tool for calibrating motor axis movements
Tool change functionality – pause, ignore, or run code blocks on M6 commands
Start-from-line functionality to resume jobs part-way through in case of failure of abort
Outline functionality indicates the rough bounds of the job before cutting
Customizable g-code injection at job start & end
Tooltips for data entry points
Alarm warning explanations to better contextualize CNC errors
Sleep management to keep PC awake during g-code sending
Pre-built machine profiles, including: LongMill
Shapeoko
X-carve
OpenBuilds CNCs
3018 CNC & PROVer
BobsCNC CNCs
CNC4Newbie CNCs
Mill Right CNCs
Ooznest WorkBee
Nomad
Carvey
Mill One, and more…
What’s the plan moving forward?
Even though we’ll be taking a quick breather after release of 1.0, we’ll still be working toward even more features into the coming future. Some of these will include:
Headless Pi operation
Surface probing and other ‘fancier’ probing types
Built-in g-code editing
3D cutting visualization
We left these off to the side ‘till now since we know that many of them would be more appealing to the more advanced users, but we’re confident that with everything currently built-in it’ll satisfy the vast majority of y’all.
Whatever comes next, we’ll be developing in two distinct branches. One that is for stable releases only, and another that you can optionally follow if you’re okay with a little less reliability but are wanting to be a part of shaping the new features that come to gSender.
Closing
It’s been great to spill this story out to y’all, there’s been a lot going on behind the scenes here at Sienci Labs this past year and I’m excited for you all to not only get more out of your machines via gSender but also via some more upcoming projects that we’ll be announcing in the coming months. Cheers everyone!
Production continues to move along. In the previous update, we talked about a couple of parts that we were waiting to restock, such as the control boards, rails, bearings, etc. At the current time, we are just waiting on PCB boards to arrive to continue shipping. PCB boards are expected to arrive on Nov 5, 2021. At the current time, we are waiting on PCB boards to arrive, and will be ready to ship when they are here. The new boards have arrived Nov 16, 2021, and we have started shipping orders out again. For more info about the status of your order, please check our forum: https://forum.sienci.com/t/list-of-shipped-machines-f-w-2021/4133.
We’ve continued to ship machines and other parts out with current stock on hand, but at the current moment, we are advising customers that LongMill orders will have a 2-3 week lead time to account for the arrival of control boards next week.
Expected lead times
Our current bottleneck is with our PCB boards. Although production is complete, we are waiting on the boards themselves to arrive. Based on tracking data, we expect them to arrive on Nov 5. If you are planning to order a LongMill, please check the estimated shipping date on the LongMill order page for the most accurate information.
Once the boards arrive, we expect to be back on our typical lead times of around 1 week until we run out of stock of Batch 5. At the current rate of sales, we expect that Batch 5 will be complete at the end of December. Lead times in Batch 6 are expected to depend on the timely arrival of new parts and components.
Batch 6 production and lead times
With the current issues with supply chain and logistics impacting the global market, we’ve continued to work hard to acquire the parts and materials to continue building machines. Although most of the parts that will be going into Batch 6 have been ordered, there still are a couple of parts that we need to order for the new batch of machines. This includes:
Drivers
Control boards
Power supplies
Arduinos
Rails
If you haven’t noticed, the first four products rely heavily on ICs, which have been impacted by the chip shortage. This has meant we have had to work with our suppliers to tackle long lead times and large increases in chip costs. This has either meant working around the long lead times, such as by shipping part of the batch by air and others by ocean freight (for our overseas suppliers), or finding new suppliers that are able to meet our manufacturing timing and requirements.
We’ve also seen big jumps in expected shipping times for both ocean shipments and express shipments. We often rely on ocean freight for shipping materials between China and Canada. With shipping times and prices increasing, we’ve had to order parts earlier than usual so that they would arrive on time. While before COVID, shipping times generally averaged between 4-6 weeks, we are now planning for shipping to take up to 12 weeks. Shipping prices have also doubled in many cases.
When we order parts from new suppliers, we also obtain samples for internal testing and QA checks. We’ve also experienced a large jump in shipping times for air express shipments, which has slowed down the ordering process. While express shipments would generally arrive in a week or so, we’ve seen packages stuck in customs or waiting for the next airplane for 3 or more weeks. This has made vetting suppliers difficult as well, as it could take over a month for us to check the quality of each new part. The most example of this would be our inductive sensors, which were heavily delayed in shipping, causing us to ship a few weeks later than we wanted.
Given the supply chain constraints, we, unfortunately, have not been able to make the changes and updates to our electronics as we’d like. Earlier last year, we had begun the development of a new control board and driver system. However, with the chip shortage, we do not expect we’ll be able to obtain the chips to make the new system until next year.
So what does this mean for Batch 6? Well, it means that customers should expect lead times to vary somewhat at the start of the batch. Without all the parts ordered and confirmed for Batch 6, we run the risk that we won’t have everything ready for shipping in January. That being said, with the measures we’re taking to order and ship things as quickly as possible, we don’t expect there to be major changes or delays in production as long as we continue to be diligent in our work.
