Hey everyone! It’s been pretty busy at the shop as we continue to ship out LongMills. We are just about to complete our first batch of machines and we have started packing our second batch.

We’ve made small improvements between the first and second batch I’d like to share. Here’s some of them:

• The arm that sticks out to hold the drag chain is now made of steel. This will eliminate this part from breaking

• New electronics enclosure integrates bent sheet metal and comes with mounting points to allow users to screw it directly to their board

• Additional circuitry in the control board to prevent issues with EMI
• Longer motor cables to provide more flexibility with mounting
• Notched Z-axis gantry to increase travel

• Higher-strength filament on 3D printed parts
• Improved mounting for dust shoe

We are always working on new ways to improve our machines and user experience with our CNC machines. We look forward to continuing to add improvements to the LongMill!

This update was originally posted on Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sienci/longmill-benchtop-cnc-router/posts/2712205

It’s been pretty crazy ride the last several months, but we’ve done it! We have now shipped all the LongMill Kickstarter machines to our 300+ backers in 23 countries. Thank you so so much to all of you for making this project possible. With the campaign coming to a conclusion, what better way to end it than with a walk through memory lane…

In 2018, the LongMill was born. We wanted to create a machine that was bigger and more powerful than the Mill One, but still kept the same philosophy of being simple and easy to use.

Here’s the first working prototype. (July/Aug 2018)

From there, we kept working on improving the LongMill (at that point it was called a LongBoi). This was when we were a scrappier startup: living in student residence, building machines in the garage, and running only a handful of 3D printers. 

As time went on and we started to share the development of the LongMill publicly, we started to gather more and more people interested in the machine and the project itself.

We also moved into an actual office at 44 Gaukel in Kitchener, an office space of around 500 sqft. (Aug 2018)

One of the folks interested in the project was Terry, who became one of the 10 beta testers for the LongMill.

We spent the next two months finishing building our beta machines and working with makers in Canada, US, and France to improve and further develop the LongMill. We built the LongMills by hand, making changes and updates along the way.

Here’s us hanging out with our beta testers.

 And also, here’s Greg.

With valuable testing and feedback from our beta testers over six months, we continued to improve the machine.

In February 2019, we went to our first woodworking trade show in Toronto. There were so many people interested in the LongMill that we felt pretty confident that it was a good time to launch our Kickstarter campaign.

From our Kickstarter launch on March 26, 2019, we quickly raised our $60,000 goal in 16 hours, and soared all the way to $436,197 during the 30 day campaign. 

And thus began our journey of manufacturing our first batch of 400 LongMills.

Here are some highlights:

– Growing our print farm from a small handful of machines to more than 40 3D printers

– Working with the BETS students from the University of Waterloo during the summer

– Growing our full time team from just me and Chris to 5 full time employees

– Having fun fooling around while packing hundreds of thousands of parts together

– Designing our own fun little touch plates

– Moving from our 500sqft office to our new 2400sqft office

– Designing our new LongBoard controllers with our friend Chris Hadjuk

– Being in the Record (our local newspaper)

– Loading enough steel into the cop car until the bottom of the vehicle would touch the ground

Here’s what our office looked like when we were showing it:

Here’s the office in August (top), and today (bottom). It’s gotten a little bit more crowded.

We hit a lot of snags, some small, some big. We learned a lot of stuff.

Over the course of 7 months, we worked hard designing, testing and building. We started shipping in October, 3 months past when we were expecting to ship our first machines, but during that time, we’ve improved the LongMill in many ways.

Some of those improvements include:

– X axis reinforcements on the 12×30 and 30×30 to significantly improve torsional rigidity

– Stronger 3D printed parts all around

– Solid aluminum router mount

– Steel Z axis motor mount plate

– Improved bearing system for constraining the lead screw

– Better, more efficient motors

– New control board with integrated drivers, pinouts, and button control 

We wanted to make sure that we shipped a machine that was not only great, but something we could be proud of. The results speak for themselves.

Here’s some cool projects that have already been done by Kickstarter backers!

Not to mention the awesome table setups that have already been shared to the community as well: 

And to bring this whole story back around to the end: from everyone here on the Sienci Labs team, thank you to all of you guys for supporting us on this campaign and project. We couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks to your trust in us we’ve now been able to bring the LongMill to life in a way which is so exciting to see.

With the Kickstarter concluding, all our future communication will be happening on our already vibrant communities on both Facebook and on our Website forum, so come and join the discussion over there if you haven’t joined them already.

Lastly, we’re going to be having a party! If you’re in the area, then come join us this Friday evening at our Waterloo office to celebrate the conclusion of this momentous campaign! For more info, visit https://www.facebook.com/events/939478149771378/

Again, thank you everyone. Have a Merry Christmas and thanks for the great year. 

Until next time,

Andy, Chris, and the rest of the Sienci Labs team.

We have gotten a lot of questions about the settings used for the LongMill. This post will cover details on what settings we use for printing our parts.

3D printed parts have a bit of a reputation for being weak and inferior to metal or injection molded parts. However, we believe that the flexibility that 3D printing affords us to be able to improve on our designs incrementally is much more important for us. We’ve spend countless hours to continue to improve our designs and our printing process to make the strongest and most durable 3D prints possible.

Material

We print all of our parts using black PLA+. We purchase a special formulation of PLA+ designed for high strength in bulk to use specifically in our farm which is not available to the general public.

Parts designed for 3D printing are usually made so that they are relatively forgiving in terms of material quality and printing settings.

Printers

We use a combination of Ender 3s, Anycubic Mega-S, and Prusa i3 printers. Parts are usually segregated by printer depending on its strengths and weaknesses (ability to print overhangs, bed surface, speed, ect). However, if you are printing at home and not in a production environment, any FDM printer will do.

Most of our printers have small modifications such as all aluminum extruders, higher quality levelling springs, and glass beds which help improve print quality and reduce maintenance.

Settings

Here are our settings.

• 0.6mm nozzle

We have found that a 0.6mm nozzle gives a good balance between print speed and quality. Larger nozzles may be good for larger parts like the angle mounts and feet.

• 235 degrees C

We have found that layer adhesion is strongest for our particular filament at 235 degrees. However, your filament may vary.

• 0.3-0.35mm layer height

Like above, this setting balances print speed and quality.

• 30-50% gyroid infill

We found that gyroid infill provides good strength in all directions. A higher infill can improve part strength, but we use a lower infill on parts that are more prone to warping, or do not require high strength. Instead of increasing infill, it is usually better to “beef up” the part for higher rigidity.

• 3 perimeters (1.8mm appx)

Higher number of perimeters improves print strength. I would recommend using more perimeters if you are using a smaller nozzle.

• 3-4mm top and bottom solid thickness

For some parts take loads along the plate of the solid walls of the printed part, increasing this number can help improve the rigidity of the part.

Tips and conclusion

If you are printing parts for yourself, you can choose settings that best fit with your printer. Increasing infill, number of perimeters, and top and bottom solid thickness can improve the strength of your parts.

One set of parts takes approximately 40 hours of printing.

Every printer is a little bit different and thus works best with different settings. We recommend using the settings that work for you. The settings above are what works for us, and gives us a high quality, high strength part.

This update was originally posted on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sienci/longmill-benchtop-cnc-router/posts/2656970

Hey everyone. Here’s another update.

We have started shipping!

Can you believe it?!? This is a pretty big milestone for us, as it means we’ve ironed out enough kinks to finally get a machine out the door.

Here’s some things you should know.

– We’ve gotten in touch with the first handful of local pickups to arrange for pickups for their machines.

– We’re starting with some of the pickups because 1) if there’s an issue with the first set of machines, they will catch them the fastest 2) we can help these users in the local area the fastest if there are any issues.

– You will get a message with your tracking info and other important info before your machine ships. We will get in touch with you if there is any other info we need on our side.

Boards and testing

As mentioned in the last update, the boards have arrived and are going through testing.

From our testing last week, we ran into a snag. We found that we are triggering an alarm that freezes the machine under these circumstances:

• The machine is experiencing a large cutting load (10mm dado bit at 6-8mm depth of cut)
• The machine is cutting left to right

We suspect that the electromagnetic interference going to the Arduino on A0 pin is causing the machine to stop and send an alarm. As a quick note, we are using A0 pin for the “Stop” button which stops the machine and cancels the cutting job.

To mitigate this, we’ve added a capacitor across the ground and A0, A1, and A2 pins to mitigate the noise which are causing these issues. Solving this issue has resulted in spending some extra time testing and troubleshooting.

We have run the boards continuously multiple times for 20+ hour stints, to make sure that the EMI issue is fixed.

Just as a note, most of the boards will have the capacitors hidden on the underside of the board, so you won’t see them.

Resources page

You can find the latest resources and assembly instructions here: https://sienci.com/longmill-benchtop-cnc/

There are some other editing and details we are adding as we go along, but those will keep coming as we get feedback and more time to work on it. 

Original post: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sienci/longmill-benchtop-cnc-router/posts/2641342

It’s been a heck of a journey up to this point.

LongMill LongBoards are finally here

We’ve been holding our breaths for these boards to finally arrive. They are finally here! We’ll be doing the final assembly, QA, testing, and assembly for the boards before we pack them into kits. 

 Final board enclosures will be made from stainless steel and acrylic, and will be pre-assembled in house.

Here are some features:

– Detachable screw terminals for power, fan, coolant control, spindle control, probe, motors, and end stops.

– Pause, Play, and Stop buttons

New 3D printers

With the continual influx of orders, to boost our production rate for printing, as well as the additional dust shoe orders that have come in, we’ve added another 24 printers to the farm, for a total number of around 37-38 total printers!

Some small improvements we’ve made to printed parts:

– Stronger front Y axis mounts

-Stronger, easier to install Y axis drag chain holder

Woodstock Woodworking Show

Thank you to everyone who came out to the woodworking show in Woodstock! We had a blast there. It was awesome to meet a bunch of our backers, as well as other people in the community, and it was a fun way to get our heads out of production work for a little bit and actually get to talk to woodworkers.

Our next show will be in November at the Hamilton/Ancaster Woodworking Show November 8-10th! Learn more at: https://woodshows.com/Hamilton/

First batch of shipments

The first batch of shipments will start to trickle out soon. We will get in touch with backers who will be receiving their machines in the next few weeks via email/phone. If you have not answered your surveys, please do so. 

Surveys

Thank you to everyone who’s answered their surveys! Everyone at this point should have gotten their surveys. Please check your inbox!

I’ve usually been posting the Kickstarter updates to the blog, but I missed doing the last two. Here are the updates.

Progress update #7

Original update made on August 11, 2019

Hi everyone! Here’s our latest update!

Moving

You might have seen on our last update that we were in the process of looking for a place to move to, or at least move to a different part of the building at 44 Gaukel. As time went on it looked more and more challenging for us to do so, and we focused more of our efforts into moving out to a new building all together.

Given that we only had about 2 and a half weeks to find a place to move, we were in a bit of a rush to find a new place. Luckily, we found a place nearby that had everything we needed, and an awesome landlord that helped us move in early and get the space set up.

 We’re going to have a housewarming party this coming Friday! Join us! Here’s a link to the Facebook event:  https://www.facebook.com/events/445993309319534/ 

All of the filament and other parts have showed up (finally)

All of the filament, as well as other parts have finally arrived last Friday! Getting everything in ended up taking a lot longer than expected, especially because of the customs delays.

This means we will be busy packing up these items over the next few weeks, as well as getting the print farm up to speed on new parts. 

1/4″ end other add-ons!

Now that we’ve received and packed all of the end mills, the remaining bits are now on the store! 

If you want to order other stuff for your machine, we’ll have a coupon code for free shipping for add on items that we can ship with your machine. It will be included in your surveys when they come out. More details are here: https://sienci.com/2019/07/26/ordering-extra-stuff-with-your-longmill/ 

Here’s a link to our touchplate:  https://sienci.com/product/touch-plate/
Here’s a link to our dustshoe: https://sienci.com/product/dust-shoe/
Here’s a link to our t-shirt: https://sienci.com/product/sienci-labs-t-shirt/ 

If you are not sure of what items you ordered with your machine, you can calculate it out based on your pledge amount. Please check your account and pledge amount if you are unsure of what items you opted in for.

Electronics board design

We have finalized the design for the LongMill’s electronics board. A special thanks to Jeff from JKVC for giving us a once over for the design. Another special thank you to Chris Hajduk for working on this project with us!

We’ve made some changes to the parts and design of the board in the last few weeks to improve its safety and reliability, as well as easier to use features like the end stops and touch plate on the board, especially for people who will be adding their own functionality.

This is our last step in the LongMill’s manufacturing process. Once we have those, we will be able to ship out the machines. Current estimates for production is around 28 days. In the meantime we will be packing as much of all the other things as we can. Stay tuned for more updates on that.

Progress Update #8

Original update made on September 4, 2019

Hi everyone! This will be a relatively short update as we continue to move along with production. 

New touch plate video and documentation

Did you guys see our new video on using and setting up your touch plate? 

Detailed documentation can be found here: https://sienci.com/docs/longmill-benchtop-cnc/hardware/touch-plates/

If you have an idea for a cheeky song lyric for the next batch of touch plates, let us know!

 Surveys

Thank you for everyone who have filled out their surveys. We have sent out surveys for all *Early Bird* backers. If you backed the Kickstarter after the first three days, the surveys for those have not been sent out yet.

We did make one small mistake. In the section that lets us know what add-ons you selected, there is no option if you did not get an add on. If that is the case, please select one of the add-ons and note that you did not order any add-ons in the Kickstarter. 

LongMill documentation in progress

We are currently working on new documentation (software, hardware, etc) for the LongMill. You can read and take a gander on our documentation page here: https://sienci.com/docs/longmill-benchtop-cnc/introduction/

If you have any topics you want included in the resources, feel free to leave a comment and we’ll add it to our list of things to write on.

Electronics boards

Our last batch of parts we are waiting on are the electronics boards. We are expecting them to arrive in approximately 2 to 3 weeks given that there are no delays. There was a delay with acquiring some of the PCB components in China, but the boards themselves have all been made. 

Once the boards come in, we will start doing some of the assembly here, which includes putting in the drivers and assembling the cases for them. 

Our goal is to pack all of the other components up first and ship as quickly as we make the electronics. As this is our last part, our shipping time is more or less up to when these boards show up, but it should happen within a week once they arrive. We will update backers on the progress. Thank you everyone for their patience!

You might have noticed that the Mill One V3 has been out of stock for a few days. The reason is because we are out of aluminum rails for them (although we think that we might have a few left lying around in the office somewhere). We’re at the end of the production batch for this set of Mill Ones, and we’ve cleared out most of the parts used for the Mill One.

With the recent success of our Kickstarter campaign for the LongMill, and its ongoing sales, we’ve had the opportunity to buy parts and materials in volumes much larger than we’ve ever been before. It has also allowed us to use parts and components that were otherwise harder to obtain in lower volumes. There are also new parts and materials that didn’t exist when we first designed the Mill One which are superior to old parts.

We want to take this opportunity to refresh and improve the Mill One with new parts and a new design. We believe that since we have the opportunity to make a better machine, we should take it.

What does this mean?

1. The newest version of the Mill One (or Mill Two?) will come with better, higher quality components that will make the machine better.
2. The new design will be better and more powerful, drawing from years of design and manufacturing experience we’ve gained through building the Mill One and the LongMill.
3. It will be a few months until we’ll have a new machine available.

If you have a Mill One and need support and parts, feel free to get in touch with us. We’ll still be able to help you out. If you wanted to get a machine but missed out, we still have designs available online if you want to make your own.

Make sure to stay tuned for updates on further development.

Hey everyone! We’ve been getting a lot of excited people for our dust shoes, end mills, touch plates, and all the really cool stuff that we’ll be selling alongside the LongMill.

Don’t worry, we’ll make sure everyone is going to be able to order stuff for their machine, as well as get it shipped alongside everything else.

We are currently in the progress of completing the product pages and doing all the work to get that up, they will be available before your machine ships.

We will be providing a coupon code that will allow you to order items for your machine with free shipping since we will be putting it alongside your machine. We do not plan on releasing that code until all of the items have been uploaded so that customers can make the full purchase in one go instead of having them split up.

Kickstarter backers will get the code in their survey. Folks who placed a pre-order will receive a follow-up email.

You will be able to include items such as:

• Touch plates
• Dust shoes
• End mills
• T-shirts
• and anything else in the store.

If you want to order something right away and have it shipped, we will ship your items out within a few days.

I forgot to post up the new updates on the blog. Here they are. You can find the latest updates on Kickstarter page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sienci/longmill-benchtop-cnc-router/updates

Progress Update #5

We have a lot of news, a lot of updating to do! 

I will cover some of the details on how production is going for the LongMill. A lot of stuff here is an update on some things in progress from the last update.

Gantry plates

I’m happy to say that the first batch of the gantry plates have come in. We haven’t gotten around to checking them thoroughly yet, but we will do that in the next few days and start to pack them up. As so far as I can tell, they look great!

The remaining plates will be completed next week and will be sent in to be powder coated.

NEMA 23 stepper motors

Manufacturing for all of the stepper motors finished on Monday and are being prepared for shipping! Our plan is to ship part of the batch of around 400 motors through express shipping (1-2 weeks) so that we can pack and ship them immediately, and the remaining 1200 motors by boat (4 weeks) so that they will come in when by the time we get through to ship the first 100 machines. 

We have done extensive testing on these motors, and we are really happy to say that the quality of these motors and the performance we’ve been getting has surpassed the motors used on the beta testing machines. Not only do they provide more torque, they run cooler (after around 16 hours of running at full power, around 47-50 degrees for the new motors versus around 75 degrees on the old motors. We are using a new supplier that provides higher quality motors.

Power supplies

Testing is complete with the new sample power supply. We ran tests on it alongside our new board for 22 hours straight, as well as over the last two weeks on our LongMill. I am happy to say that the power supply has been working fantastic (running at around 39 to 42 degrees) and as so far, no issues. 

The power supplies have been ordered and should also arrive in a few weeks. We will continue to use the power supply to see if there is any other issues that crop up.

Control electronics

We have assembled our prototype CNC control board and have been putting it through rigorous testing. This includes running the board at full tilt overnight as well as using it on our LongMill for testing and cutting. The board has been working reliability with no issues so far.

The drivers that integrate with the board are expected to arrive on Thursday. We will make one final test prototype with some improvements that will improve safety, ease of use, and reliability before making the full batch. 

Packing progress

So…much…packing

We’ve been packing things as they have been trickling in. Some items include:

– Couplers

– Router mounts

– Aluminum standoffs

– Aluminum rails

and everything else that has been coming in.

We are trying to pack everything as soon as they come in and put them in storage so that they are ready to go ASAP once we have everything arrive.

If you’re in the KW area and want to come pack for us as well (during office hours 10AM to 5/6PM), send us an email at hi@sienci.com.

End Mills 

We also got in all of the end mills that are supposed to come with the Kickstarter LongMills. 

This includes: 

– Single flute 1/8 aluminum cutting end mills

– 1/4 inch upcut and downcut bits

– 1/8 flat and ball end mills

There are extra that we will put on the store so that people can order more if they want/need and we will provide a coupon code so that we will ship those items alongside the LongMills for free.

Documentation

We are slowly starting to work on documentation. That means everything from unboxing, assembly, to running your first job. This will be on our website, but we are still working on it. It will be in a similar format to the Mill One resources

One thing that we’ve been getting a lot of questions about is for the table design. Chris made a document to help people set up their table, which you can find here:  https://sienci.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Guide-Document-LongMill-Table-Preparation_Version-1.pdf 

Please note that these dimensions may change by a bit, and I would recommend waiting until the final CAD has been released (when machines start to ship) before building things for the machine if they rely on exact dimensions.

Wrapping up the update

Stay tuned for the next update and thanks for following along! Although we are a few weeks behind, thankfully things are moving along and we are still sticking to the plan. 

Thank you everyone for their patience and support, until next time.

Progress Update #6

Hi everyone! We are slowly reaching the final stages of our production, and we are working on the remaining details for the LongMill.

Here are the last remaining things that we are working on:

• Finalizing the details and design of the LongMill shield before manufacturing. 
• Complete packing for many of the parts
• Continue 3D printing parts
• Finalize the design of the dust shoe

Below are more details.

LongMill electronics

We have done extensive testing on the new electronics. We will call it the “LongBoard” for now. I don’t have a better name for it yet. It appears all of the functionality is working well. 

Before we go ahead with final production of the boards, we have made some small changes that improve the safety and reliability of the boards. The prototype boards are complete but we are still waiting on some of the components to come in to complete the board for final testing.

Packaging

We are going strong on the packaging, with two people working full time on all of the packaging, we will be implementing a second evening shift to increase our packing speed. We already have been working on packing all of the rails, gantries, fasteners, and other hardware. This week we should be seeing the remainder of the hardware such the lead screws, delrin v wheels, linear guides, and bearings. 

3D printing

We’ve put 3D printing on hold for about a week and a half since we have run out of filament. Our new batch of around 500kg is estimated to arrive in the next few days. We will continue to print components for the LongMill on an ongoing basis as we pack and ship units.

Dust shoe

We are making some changes to the dust shoe design to improve the performance and ease of use. We have found that prolonged use and vibration can cause the dust shoe to unclip from the front. The new design is significantly more robust and provides more flexibility on the Z axis to adjust the height of the shoe. We should be able to finalize the design this week and start working on printing the shoes for shipping.

————-

Some other news

New touch plate design

We felt like we could make a better touch plate so we did. Backers who placed an order for the touch plate will get the new and improved touch plate. 

This touch plate not only lets you find the Z height, but also find the corner of your part.

Here’s a video of the prototype.

Design files

I feel like this is a good time as ever to make the design files public. You can find them here:  https://sienci.com/docs/longmill-benchtop-cnc/open-source/ 

Please note:

• The only full complete assembly that reflects the final production machine is the one that is in the root directory (the 30×30). The full complete assembly of the 12×30 and 12×12 have not had a full assembly complete yet.
• The parts and design files are a bit messy. Please use them at your own risk. They will be cleaned up and better documented over the next few weeks.
• Some of the components may go through some iterations over time. 
• The link to the open source documents may change.

If you have any questions about the design please hold them for now. We’ll be happy to answer any questions once the design files are complete complete once we start shipping.

Moving?

To add to the fray, we’ve been caught in the middle of a renovation project by the City of Kitchener to demolish our office space at 44 Gaukel to rebuild new offices on the first floor. Our current plan for moving is to go to the upstairs of the building. Moving is of course somewhat inconvenient, especially at this time.

We would still be able to keep the storage and packing space in the back of the building, but in the next couple weeks we will have to figure out where the future home will be for Sienci Labs.

For the time being, the Accelerator Centre and the City have agreed to help us coordinate and assist in the move. Chances are we will temporarily move our operations upstairs before finding a new, more permanent home for the company.

As we continue to move forward, we expect that the company to grow and expand, and that means having a space to house everyone. We’ve gone to a team of 2 to a team of 8 already, and our space is slowing becoming more and more cramped.

Stay tuned for more details!

Again, wrapping up this update.

This feels like a bit of a shorter update. Now that a lot of the leg work has been done, we’ve got a lot of tiny little things to sort out. Thank you to everyone for their support again, and I was very thankful for everyone who’ve been showing their support and excitement online and through messages. It’s also been pretty cool to meet a lot of excited backers who have been dropping by our office. 

Until next time.

Original Kickstarter update here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sienci/longmill-benchtop-cnc-router/posts/2542182

Some progress, some delays

I’m happy to say that production is moving smoothly for the most part, with the exception of a couple of different parts that we’re still waiting for.

I’ll start off with all the things that are going to slow down production before I fill you guys in for everything that’s moving along well.

I would say first batch of shipping right now will happen in August, but we can do a few things to catch up and ship at a faster pace once shipping happens such as pre-packing the stuff we already have. I will try to hire some extra help to get thing pushed out if need be.

Some smaller things that are in progress:

– 3D printers are running full time, we have about 10 or 11 machines churning out parts

– We are pushing the manufacturers/suppliers to send us parts ASAP. Some delays on shipping/production on that side that we don’t have much control over at this point.

– All of the gantries are in the middle of being cut and painted. Because we have so many parts, they will be batched out over 4 weeks. 

Power supplies

We are currently in the middle of dealing with sourcing power supplies. The power supplies that the beta testers have been using are open power supplies, which are a little more dangerous (open mains, exposed electronics), so we are trying to switch to a closed power adapter. Our supplier provided us with a power supply that we set out to test. 

Testing was done by basically connecting all of the motors and drivers together to provide a realistic type of load, and we cranked up the load by adjusting the current and speed to the motors. 

The idea is to run the drivers and thus the power supply for a long time to see if they fail.

Well, after about 1 hour of testing the power supply, just stopped working. We’re not really sure why, but we opened it up, and we couldn’t tell if there was any physical damage inside. The supplier has arranged to send us another power supply.

Once we get it (hopefully at the start of next week), we’ll put it through testing again to make sure that it can run reliably. 

After we complete the testing, assuming that the power supply works well, it will take about 3 weeks for it to be made and shipped to us.

Control electronics

We’ve gotten our physical boards made up, and our next step is to assemble and test the boards. 

The last two components, the power barrel plug and the voltage regulator are two parts that we’ve had some issue getting in. We’ve ordered the parts, but we are still waiting on the supplier to ship.

We may be able to put it together partially to test most of the basic functions however, so I will provide an update on that later.

We’re pretty excited about this new board because:

1) It will make it a lot easier for customers to assemble the electronics

2) It will provide support for many features that customers have been wanting, which include end stops, touch probe, spindle control, and more

I expect that the remaining parts will require another week to arrive, and the final production batch to take about three weeks once the testing is complete.

These are the two things that right now need to be ironed out. Here’s some updates on some good progress we’ve made however.

Lots and lots of aluminum

We got our batch of freshly drilled, milled, and tapped rails in this week!

With 6 people, it looks us just under 1.5 hours to unload all the materials. A good morning workout.

We’ll be cleaning, wrapping, and packing them starting next week!

Packaging

As we have parts come in, we’re working on getting packaging materials in so that we can start pre-packing materials.

We’ve come up with a basic design of having four cartons on the top and two on the bottom like in the photo. One large carton will carry all of the small parts.

Having these separate cartons should make it easier for us to pack all of the different variations between the different size machines, add-ons, and other bits and bobs. We will try to pack parts into cartons as they come in and set them in storage so that they are ready when we start shipping

Surveys and other details

Please read this part carefully.

You want to make an adjustment on your order/pledge

A lot of people have been messaging us to ask for additional add-ons, changes to the size of the machine, ect. We can help you with that. If you are wanting to make a change, please follow these instructions.

1) If you need to change the size of your machine (eg 12×30 to 30×30), please wait until you receive a survey from Kickstarter, which will ask you for your shipping address and other details. We will have a spot for you to tell us if you want to change the size and to what. Please wait until you receive the survey.

2) If you want add-ons, end-mills, or anything else to ship with your machine, we will set up a page on our website to allow you to purchase those things. We will provide an update with further instructions so that you will receive free shipping on those items. 

When will I get my survey?

You will get a survey a few weeks before your machine ships. You’ll have plenty of time to fill it out, so don’t worry that you’ll miss it. When it will come out will depend a lot on how the production comes along, since we want to focus on that first. We’ll put it in the later updates on more clarification on when you should expect them too.