Hey guys, a lot of things moving forward at Sienci Labs.

So traditionally I’ve been writing production updates for pretty much every product, but I’ve realized for some things there’s not much news with some things, especially if they’ve been shipping out smoothly for a while, so I’m going to stick to writing about new stuff. If you’re looking for an update on something and you don’t see it, check out the previous blog posts for more information. https://sienci.com/category/production-updates/

LongMill MK2/MK2.5

As we brought up in the last update, we are transitioning the LongMill to include a few new updates to the machine. Things happened a lot faster than we expected, resulting in the rest of our original LongMill (LongBoard) controllers being sold out and allocated to the previous batch. We are now into Batch 9 and are taking orders for LongMill MK2.5.

The LongMill MK2.5 Kits are expected to ship 6-8 weeks from the time of order. Once we start shipping the backlog, we expect to be able to get this lead time down.

Chris has written a new post “Introducing the LongMill MK2.5”, which covers everything you need to know about the differences, changes, and pricing for the updates.

We are waiting on more SLBs to arrive in the next few weeks, which will allow us to start shipping LongMill MK2.5 and the rest of the SLB backorders. This means that we have a growing waitlist of orders, which we are currently prepping so that we can get out the door as soon as all of our parts arrive. We are tentatively expecting them to arrive around the end of this week or start of next week.

We’re also hiring some extra staff to help with the packing for AltMill and LongMill to help with the extra production workload.

SuperLongBoard

We continue to wait for the second batch of SuperLongBoards to arrive. We are expecting them to arrive in the first week of June, which will allow us to clear the remaining backlog of orders and start shipping the LongMill. We will receive a batch of 1500 in total (but spread over a few weeks), which should allow us to stay stocked for some time.

Additionally, SLB-EXT for the first 50 AltMills testing has been successful. We are updating the value of one of the capacitors and soldering the first 50 boards by hand to fix some issues with the switching circuit. I look forward to the larger rollout of the SLB-EXT, as perhaps it may offer a solid offering for not just the AltMill but for other CNC machines as well.

AltMill

A lot of progress has been made with the AltMill project, and we are getting ready for shipping. As we discussed in the last update, we are expecting a few straggler parts for us to wait on before we can ship. It appears that our last item to arrive is the wiring harnesses for the closed-loop stepper motors. We expect these to arrive in the first week of June.

Based on the team’s estimates, we expect to start shipping on the second week of June, but wanted me to let everyone know to set their expectations not too high in case we run into issues.

Additional work and supply chain continue to happen to prepare parts to arrive in July/August for the full rollout of the AltMill.

Assembly for the AltMill is in full swing, as we have mostly finished building the jigs for assembly.

Some of the test packaging has arrived and we are double-checking the dimensions of everything and doing the final touches to the graphics for all of the packaging.

Also excited to share the first look at the AltMill Spindle Kits. We will have them available for sale additionally in a few weeks, as a lot of folks have asked us to allow the purchase of them outside of the AltMill kit. We likely won’t ship them until August, so there will be a bit of a waiting period for these if you’re ordering them without an AltMill.

In addition to manufacturing for the AltMill, we’re also working on building out the assembly portion of the AltMill, and we’ve already started putting together tons of resources to help users get their machines ready to go as soon as they arrive.

Sienci Router (Sienci Sprouter)

I think I mentioned this in the last update, but Johann went to China to meet with the motor manufacturers to iron out some of the things we were continuing to work on for this project.

Here’s a couple of takeaways:

• Based on our initial assumption, we believe that we are at the edge of how accurate sensorless control can be for controlling BLDCs. That being said, Johann was able to check on the progress of testing one of the motors using sensorless control. The result seems to be usable, although there is some more improvement that can be made, as the stability on 110V versus 220V is not acceptable yet.
• We were able to talk with a manufacturer that makes Makita clones, who may be able to make the modifications to a clone to offer external speed control, better quality bearings, and ER11 collets, which would offer a slightly improved alternative to the current Makitas
• Using a larger motor will improve the speed stability, but would cost more and be larger than the 65mm form factor we are aiming for.

There were a lot of things that we learned from Johann’s trip to China, especially about the manufacturing capacities and business structure and manufacturing processes of different companies.

If you guys watched the Garrett Fromme livestream, I talked a bit about the router vs spindle, and the name thing. So a lot of people like the name “Sprouter” so I think we might go with that for now…

From Johann’s trip we were also able to connect with another manufacturer who makes the Makita clones and we are also assessing if we should also have the clones as another option. We’d focus on:

• Having ER11 collets
• An input for PWM signal to control the router with the controller
• Better, higher quality bearings
• Pricepoint similar to the existing Makita router

So this sort of brings up another question for the development, which is whether it’s worth having an “in-between” option between an improved brushed AC Makita router and a 1.5KW spindle.

Here’s our general conclusions:

• Since we already have the 1.5KW spindle in the works for the AltMill, offering it as an option for the LongMill tackles most of the users who want to make a big upgrade to their existing LongMill. Since the programming and setup is mostly done and put together as a kit, the setup should be easy enough for most people.
• We found a company that can make the Makita clones with the extra features we’re looking for. Most of the development for this can be done hands off on our end so we can let this play out and test it once it’s ready.
• The BLDC option is still going through prototype iterations and development, and will likely take a lot more time than we expected. We’re pretty close to getting the performance we want out of it, so we’ll continue to work on it and see if we can get the pricepoint down further as well. Working on the first two options provides something for people in the short term that can help us understand more about the development for the Sprouter.

Panel Computer

If you watched the podcast that I was on with Garrett the other week, you might have seen me talk about the Panel Computer.

I think some people are going to recognize some similarities to the concept here between the Masso and this panel computer thing.

There’s a couple of things we’re working on now:

• Charles (our business development manager) has a lot of Linux experience, and is taking a stab at testing the device with a different OS.
• It turns out that the chip (i5 4th gen) that is on the test computer now is only compatible up to Windows 10. I don’t think this is specifically a problem, because it does still work, but I am looking at different chipsets that support future updates. Another contender is the N5095 or N100 chip, which is slightly faster and newer. It does cost a little bit more but is potentially a better option overall.
• We did some testing and research on doing the mass-preloading for the softwares, but need to do some more setup and testing to make sure we know how difficult and how long it takes to do.
• I’m looking at different monitor mount/arm designs to see if there’s any that stand out and improve the usability of the computer.
• The test computers we have have fans in them. Chris told me that he talked with some people working with a lot of wood that the main reasons their computers fail is because of the fans. So I am working on getting a fanless version for some testing as well.

At some point, Chris took one of the two computers I had for testing, so I suspect the dev team might be using it for some other stuff as well. I did hear that there will be a UI update in the future that makes improvements to the software that may improve the touchscreen experience as well.

I haven’t had the chance to install the computer directly to the machine yet, but one of our students from last term did set up an arm and portable touch-screen monitor to test the functionality of the interface and test out the “human factors” side of things.

It turns out with the LongMill MK2 and the AltMill, since there are threaded holes that are meant for the NEMA 23 motors on the front of the machine, this serves as a really good place to mount an arm.

Here’s some thoughts about the price point. Based on our BOM costs currently, I feel like the whole package is going to end up coming in at around $400USD. I think this is not cheap enough where I feel like it should be the default option for everyone, since a lot of people probably have a spare laptop or computer kicking around that they can use.

The only way we can get this pricepoint down further is probably if we can use lower-powered hardware, like something using ARM/RISC, but at this point, gSender optimization is not quite there for the smoothest experience. There is also updates with the new architectures that are improving its performance, especially with software that wasn’t made specifically for that architecture.

Another thing to look at is how much volume of computers we should get that would bring down the price. Right now I have quotes for 200 units, but at around 1000-1500 units, we’d save about 15% off the price.

I did create a short survey to see what sort of order interest there is for the panel computers. If you want to share your feedback, please check out the survey here: https://forms.gle/m2FAHcSBq6EJZ2sT7. This will help us get a better idea on how many computers we should start making.

Hey guys, things continue to chug along at Sienci Labs.

Growing the team

We’re looking to expand the team! If you’re interested in working for us, please check out our blog post here.

There are now some specific job postings available on Indeed.

LongMill MK2

Production for LongMills continues to move along.

Spring-loaded anti-backlash nuts continue to be a hot-selling item, with now over 560 sets of the T8 and 200 of the T12 sold. We have received another 1300 nuts (325 sets) with another few thousand in production. We expect to clear the backlog in the next week or so as we do assembly and testing.

We have gotten reports that the nuts work well, however, users should ensure that the M5 screws that hold the nuts to the gantry are not overtightened to prevent the nut from deforming and causing jamming issues. Hand tightening to ensure that the locking washers are is flush enough to keep them in place.

We are continuing to work our way through the materials from Batch 8 and are waiting on Batch 9 parts to arrive. There may be a chance that we will run out of stepper motors for the LongMill a few weeks before the new ones arrive, and so the lead time for the LongMill has been adjusted to reflect a potential slowdown.

We have discovered a small issue with the fit of the injection molded feet for the Y axis rails, and so we are not swapping over from 3D printed feet just yet. Our production and QA team are looking to fixing this problem so that we can implement them into the future batch. For now we have made a system/jig to grind them down to size. I should note that this part does not offer any performance advantages, they are just for ease of manufacturing, and so users should not be concerned about which version they have received.

LaserBeam and Vortex

LaserBeams and Vortex continue to ship out as usual, most are shipping out within a few days.

Now with the SuperLongBoard out in the world, we are working on supporting full 4-axis functionality. This means that the Vortex can be used without the switch and move around simultaneously with the Y-axis. Keep an eye out for more news in the coming months. The Vortex can still be used with the switch to change between rotary and regular milling mode with the SLB.

AltMill

We continue to hammer out things with the AltMill. We are now in production for the first 50 machines. Here’s what’s going on:

• The first test boards for SLB-EXT have arrived and are going through assembly and testing. We are expecting the remainder to arrive first week of May. Once testing is complete, we will build another approximately 200 units
• The first 50 power supplies have arrived and are undergoing testing. We are expecting another 50 to arrive in about a month.
• The first 50 gantries and extrusions are completed and going through QA and assembly. Another 150-200 sets are finishing production this month and are expected to arrive in June.
• Fasteners have arrived and are being used for assemble of some of the major assemblies
• Parts for the spindle and VFD are in production now and are expected to arrive in the end of May.
• We have been working on some closed-loop stepper testing for longer-term use.
• We have the bristles for the dust shoes in production and are finalizing the 3D printing design.

At the current rate, we have parts being made as quickly as possible, but there may be some stragglers that we may end up waiting on close to the end of the month that will determine the exact timing of the shipment.

These parts will probably be with the:

• Closed loop stepper motor cables
• Spindle and spindle components
• The production version of the SLB-EXT

This means that the first 50 AltMill customers should prepare to receive their machines in June, although we are working as hard as possible to start shipping in May.

In the meantime, we are prepping everything as we receive parts so that we can ship everything as quickly as we can once we do get everything.

Additionally, the team is hard at work in developing the resources and assembly guide for the AltMill. We don’t expect to have an assembly video this month, but are planning to make it soon as we get through the first batch of machines.

We needed to have something to test the AltMill with, so Mike made this guitar out of aluminum.

SuperLongBoard

We’re excited to announce that the first batch of SLBs have now shipped and we have just over 475 controllers in the wild. You can now find all of the setup instructions at www.sienci.com/slb

We are now in production for another 1500 controllers, with more to start shipping in the end of May/June 2024.

Based on Chris’ updates in our production meetings, while there are a few bugs to iron out, the launch of the new SLB has gone fairly smoothly. We expect to make some small tweaks to the fit and finish of the controllers and periphery materials soon to improve the assembly of the boards.

Sienci Router

As we discussed in the last update, one of the main things we needed to iron out was the reaction time of the driver of the speed control. Basically, when the router would go under load, it would slow down and speed up again, but the time for it to happen was slower than what we wanted.

We figured the only way to solve this was to send a working prototype to the motor manufacturer in China to do the testing and tuning directly. We are happy to share that the tuning as far as we can tell has greatly improved. At this stage, we still need to do our own testing in house to make sure everything functions properly, but this seems to be a promising step forward.

This also does bring us to something of an impasse, as we believe that we are reaching the limit of the speed response we can get from a sensorless motor (which is what we are using here). Any further tuning improvements may not be able to be implemented without a sensored motor.

Doing this was no small feat, as we needed to create testing processes and a makeshift dyno in-house thanks to help from the students. This dyno can help measure the power output and speed of different motors.

Some of the main things on our list to figure out now is the complete mechanical design, cooling, and safety certification. We are currently starting production on a small batch of prototype parts to build some working test setups.