Category: Production Updates

Hey everyone, here’s our February production update.

For previous production updates and other company news, feel free to check out our blog.

COVID 19 – another wave passes

COVID 19 hit us hard in January, with several of our staff, including myself, contracting the virus. This meant that many of us were off work or working from home. With the nature of our work being fairly hands-on, it took a bit of time to adapt, but luckily this wave has passed and everyone is back to work. Thankfully, symptoms for everyone were fairly mild and I am happy that everyone is ok.

General production updates

This past month has been especially hectic as we work to scale our business and production. The first area of growth is in our team, with us onboarding six new employees and two co-op engineering students over the last month and a half. By increasing the size of our team, we hope to be able to pack and ship products faster, keep a closer eye on quality control, and improve the speed and quality of our customer and technical support.

Our second area of growth is in our space and capacity. Although we are in the same space, we added two shipping containers for outside storage and also had a forklift delivered to the shop today. We are limited by space inside, but we’ll be able to move some of the materials outside in the parking lot, such as 3D printer filament, aluminum rails, and motors, that are not affected by the cold and take up a lot of space.

In the long term, I feel that we’ll have to expand to a new space. Given the growing number of products, staff, and items we have to house, we’ve reached the capacity our current space can offer. This will be something we’ll be looking at doing over the next year.

As has been the common theme for the two years, we continue to struggle through supply chain issues and shipping delays. Many of the parts that we were expecting at the end of January have now been postponed into February. This to some degree will affect the shipping time for some of our items. More info about parts delays will be included below.

LongMill MK1 Production

We’ve been making good progress in shipping the last of the LongMills in Batch 5 and have around 50 machines remaining. We are planning to have another 20 machines shipped this week, but we may be affected by snow, as we’ve received a weather warning that there will be 15-20cm of snowfall. We’re providing staff work that can be done from home, but the number of machines we ship this week may be affected by the weather.

At the time of writing, we have a new supply bottleneck, the power supplies. Another batch of power supplies was expected to be delivered at the end of January. However, we’ve been notified that the shipment has been delayed until the end of February to the start of March. Currently, we have enough power supplies to ship the rest of the machine for this week, but the last 10-15 orders will have to wait until we get more. I will be working with our suppliers to possibly expedite another batch of parts to finish with the rest of the orders.

LongMill MK2 Production

We continue to wait for parts to arrive for the LongMill MK2. We now have a portion of the materials needed for MK2 production, but some parts, including power supplies, gantries, inside packaging, cables, and a few other things are still in transport and are expected to arrive this month.

Given the current status of the shipments, we expect that MK2 will ship closer to the middle to end of March at this point. Based on the estimated arrival dates, it appears that the power supplies are likely to be the last set of parts to arrive. We’ll be contacting our suppliers to see if it is possible to expedite a second batch as well so that we can possibly ship machines earlier.

We are now packing and assembling sub-components of the kit, including spacers, couplers, v-wheels, printed feet, lead screws, drag chains, and more in preparation for shipping of the MK2.

LaserBeam Production

We are now packing, assembling, and packing LaserBeams for orders placed in November, and have currently shipped around 300 units. Ikenna and the rest of our team continue to develop new resources for the LaserBeam system in the resources.

We are now waiting for new drivers and power supplies to arrive to ship orders placed between November and January and are scheduled to ship at the end of February. New orders placed today and onwards are expected to ship by the end of March.

LongMill MK2 48×30 and Extension kits

Our first half of parts for the 48in X-axis for the LongMill MK2 are on the way and are expected to arrive in the next two weeks. We will be testing and checking the parts to make sure that they are to spec and work correctly. Once the testing is complete and all the parts work successfully, we will start to open up for the 48×30 version of the machine as well as the extension kits. This is expected to happen at the end of February.

There are still a couple more kinks to work out with the larger X-axis, such as:

• Longer wiring or wiring extensions for the motor, router, and inductive sensors
• Adapters for using the original X-axis with the new rail and nut design

Development for these parts still needs to happen. Based on my estimates, I expect we will be able to ship the first extension kits out sometime in May.

We’ll be putting out more details as we continue with the development.

Hi everyone. We are now back from the holidays and full force into getting orders shipped out. Here are some news and updates for this month.

LongMill MK2 is now open for pre-order

LongMill MK2s are now open for preorder. For complete info about the updated version of the LongMill, please see the update.

Pending LongMill orders

If you placed an order for the original version of the LongMill and you’re in the queue here, we are working on packing and shipping your order. We have been delayed in shipping the remaining LongMill orders as the couplers which were estimated to arrive on December 30, 2021 have been delayed. Due to the delay, we have ordered a rush batch of couplers which are expected to arrive around Jan 12th, and shipping for LongMills will be temporarily halted until the couplers arrive.

We’ve sent customers who are expected to be affected by this delay emails over the holidays to let them know ahead of time. We are currently assessing estimated delivery times for the remaining orders and will provide customers with updates soon. We’ll be updating order statuses on our Forum and our new Order Status page.

Response times for customer service (emails, tickets, and phone calls)

We have been overwhelmed with emails, tickets, and phone calls from customers, especially as we get caught up with messages that have come in over the past week while our offices were closed. We are working hard to respond to all of our customers, however, it may take longer than usual to get back to everyone. Thank you for everyone’s patience.

COVID situation

COVID 19 cases in the Waterloo region have seen a large increase in recent weeks. We recently had one of our employees coming back from vacation test positive for COVID 19. Fortunately, they were not exposed to everyone else at the shop as they tested positive before they came back to work, but it feels that a potential outbreak in our workplace becomes more and more likely as the pandemic becomes more severe.

To help keep our employees safe, we are pushing more of our staff to work from home. We are continuing to work to help set more of our staff to work from home and reduce the number of people at our office.

We continue to ask folks that are picking up orders from our office to stay inside their vehicles for pick-ups instead of attempting to enter our building without permission.

Lead times for LongMills and LaserBeams

We continue to wait for parts to arrive for the LongMill, LongMill MK2, and LaserBeam kits and ship products out as materials come in and get processed. We’ve created a new system for people to see the status of their order and see where they are in line for shipping.

Doing customer service when lead times are long for your products is particularly challenging for a number of reasons, including:

• Folks are antsy about when they are going to get their machine, especially since they spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on something from a random company on the internet (us)
• It’s hard to keep track of when the order was placed and when it’s supposed to show up, as well as remember the estimated delivery time that was promised
• There’s a lot of anticipation and excitement built up, which quickly turns into frustration when there are delays
• Folks want to get their things to line up with their personal lives, such as with holidays and vacation time

We made some mistakes in terms of communication and setting expectations with our customers on when their machines would get delivered. For example, we said that we could ship a certain number of machines per day, so customers were expecting us to be shipping that number every day. However, because the number we can ship is limited to other factors, such as parts availability and the number of machines that the couriers can take that day, we were not clear on the fact that the number that we said we could ship was not always the number that we actually shipped. Some of our customers were calculating the number of days they would be waiting to get their machine based on the best-case scenario.

More realistically, customers should be planning their delivery based on the number of weeks that we advertised on our order page at the time the order was placed. Typically, the lead time will be stated as a range of weeks, such as 4-6 weeks.

The second mistake was how I sent the email out about the delay on the couplers. As some folks may know, the shipment of couplers that were slated to arrive on Dec 30, 2021, but was delayed until the middle of January. I emailed customers that this may affect the delivery time of their order. This email was only sent out to a small handful of customers who would potentially see that their orders would ship outside of the initial lead time that was promised, however, customers who the delay would not be affected also were upset that delays were happening, even though it would not affect the delivery time of their order as it is scheduled to ship later.

Our team is working to find new ways to improve transparency and communication with customers, but in the meantime, we’ve created a simple auto-updating list for new orders.

Our goal with this system is:

• Customers can see what the status of their order is at any time, reducing the need to contact us directly about the order
• They can see what the lead time was and how much time had elapsed, providing clarity on what delivery time was promised and if we are meeting them

Creating this system was actually a bit eye-opening as well. Given how much pressure we were putting on ourselves to ship quickly and manage customers with high expectations, we were feeling that we were always missing shipping deadlines. Now that we can visually see how much time had passed, it appears that we’ve been shipping almost all of our LongMills within our estimated times.

Hey everyone, here is our December 2021 production update.

If you’re waiting on a machine to ship, you can find the list by order here: https://forum.sienci.com/t/list-of-shipped-machines-f-w-2021/4133

New LongMill orders

*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.

Hey everyone. Here is an update on production in the second half of November. You can read the previous update here: https://sienci.com/2021/10/29/november-2021-production-update/

If you’re waiting on a machine to ship, you can find the list by order here: https://forum.sienci.com/t/list-of-shipped-machines-f-w-2021/4133

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.

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.

Hi everyone. Here is our November 2021 Production Update. For the previous update, please check: https://sienci.com/2021/09/23/september-october-production-updates/

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.

Hi everyone. Here’s a production update for September/October 2021.

We’ve seen a small uptick in LongMill sales over the last couple of months. Overall, shipping and production have been moving along smoothly, and most of the LongMill orders have been shipping out within a few days. We’ve reached the middle of Batch 5 a little sooner than we expected, and we may start to see us run out of a few parts as we wait on parts to complete the second half of Batch 5.

Just as a side note, we build machines in batches, and Batch 5 consists of 1000 LongMills. With smaller or inexpensive parts, parts with long lead times, and parts that we need to make large quantities of to take advantage of the economies of scale, we order 1000 sets of parts. On the other hand, larger or more expensive parts, parts that have short lead times, and parts that are made locally, we produce in smaller batches. In this case, we produced 500 sets of gantries, control box parts, and rails.

It’s important for us as a business to try to time the production and purchasing for each of our components. Over-producing means having to pay for inventory that needs to sit on shelves, while under-producing means having longer wait times for completed products. We of course try to balance these things and make production as seamless as possible.

Due to the uptick in sales, we’re running out of parts sooner than we expected, which may lead to shortages of parts. Currently, we are expecting to run out of gantries in the next few days. The laser cutting for the gantries is expected to be completed on Monday, with painting and finishing of the gantries to take about 2 weeks to complete. We will be working with our manufacturers to coat the parts that we are lowest first so that we can keep production going, but regardless, you should expect the lead time to increase until the rest of the gantries are completed.

Other parts that are still in production, but are expected to arrive before we run out include:

• Rails
• Control boards
• Control box parts
• Drivers
• Flange bearings

Expected lead times

With the gantries expected to be our bottleneck, we expect machines, once they are out of stock, to start shipping LongMills again around the third week of October.

If you are planning to order a LongMill, please check the estimated shipping date on the LongMill order page for the most accurate information.

Surging ocean freight prices and continued instability in the shipping industry

Increased consumer spending and pandemic woes have continued to cause instability in the shipping industry. Recent surges in ocean freight prices now mean that shipping products between China and North America have roughly quadrupled in price compared to the start of this year. The chart below represents a pricing index to compare shipping rates.

This of course impacts us. A reasonable percentage of parts that we use for the LongMill comes from China, so we are also at the mercy of ever-changing shipping prices.

Luckily, the LongMill is a non-commodity product with a reasonably large profit margin, allowing us to adjust to changes in fluctuation prices more easily than commodity items that have low margins, such as general household items. We have kept the price of the LongMill the same for the past two years, but inflation and current events may eventually warrant increasing our prices as well.

In the longer term, I hope that shipping prices do stabilize. Realistically though, I expect that shipping prices will stay high in the near future, and other unexpected factors may come up, so we will have to keep our eyes peeled for that.

Batch 6 is now currently in production as well, with this batch being 1500 LongMills. By increasing our batch sizes, I hope to smooth out the supply chain and give ourselves more time and flexibility between batches.

Hi everyone, this is a production update for July and August. I’m happy to announce that we are expecting the lead times for the next 400 machines to be 1 to 2 weeks (update, as of August 10, lead times for LongMills is under 1 week). For the most part, we expect most machines to ship within a few days. Any orders that are still pending shipment at the time of writing should be shipped by Tuesday of next week.

All of the parts that we were waiting on for this part of the batch have now arrived and we should not be seeing any major delays in shipping for roughly the next 8 weeks.

During part of July, we ran into some part shortages, such as with our control boards, Delrin anti-backlash nuts, and drivers. We also had a short period of time where our print farm was also shut down due to a shortage of filament. These shortages were caused primarily due to shipping delays. We’ve finally have gotten all of our parts without much issue, and can continue production.

At this point, we will be able to produce another 400 units without running into supply shortages. There are still a number of components we expect to start running out of once we ship the 400 units, including:

• Rails
• Gantries and other steel components
• Control boards

We have placed orders for these items at the time or writing or are in the process of ordering these parts.

In any case, that’s our update for this month (and August). Happy making!

Hey everyone, this is our June production update. For previous production updates and other company news, please check our blog.

It’s continued to be a busy month for April, but as we talked a little bit in our previous update for April/May, we have continued to shorten our lead times. We’ve taken the time to train some of our staff on new responsibilities and reorganize and plan production for the coming months. We are near the end of our run of Batch 4 machines and are starting to prepare for shipping Batch 5 in June.

In terms of COVID, Ontario has slowly seen a decrease in cases and more of our staff are becoming vaccinated. We are fortunate to have had no cases so far, and hopefully none until the end of the pandemic.

Lead Times

Lead times are expected to average around 1-2 weeks for this month, however we are starting to face shortages in parts that will rely on the timely arrival to keep up with production. Some of these parts include:

• E-stops
• Touch plates
• Arduinos
• Delrin V-wheels

We expect these parts to arrive in 1-2 weeks. However, this may change if we face delays in transit. We will keep lead times updated on the product page to account for these changes.

Supply Chain

There have been some minor bumps along the way in terms of supply chain especially due to current worldwide events, but luckily with early planning and dedication from the manufacturers we work with, the supply chain process for Batch 5 has been relatively smooth.

One area that we’ve seen a large spike in prices have been with drivers and Arduinos. Due to the chip shortage, many of the components that go into the LongBoard controller have gone up in price. Most ICs that go into this production have doubled in price, and new products that we are working on that involve chips may be delayed due to the unavailability of chips. We have acquired parts for the next 500 controllers with approximately another 100 controllers in stock, but we may need to be cautious of continuing shortages for the rest of 2021.

On the topic of spiking prices, steel prices have gone up more than double since the start of the pandemic, affecting the price of gantries and other steel components that go into making the LongMill. On a lesser level, copper, tungsten carbide, and other raw materials have increased overall prices for many components as well such as E-stops and end mills. Cardboard shortages with our packaging manufacturer have also affected costs and lead times a few times over the last few months too.

Luckily due to improving processes and increasing batch sizes, we have been able to find other ways to save costs and so we don’t expect to have major changes in pricing for our products, however, it is a reality that we may need to face at some point that our company will have to account for changing material prices by increasing the prices of our products.

We have also been affected by the shipping fiascos that have been happening around the world as well. Although we weren’t directly involved in the Suez Canal crisis, we have experienced slowdown in some shipments due to this situation. At the time of writing, most of the parts that we need for Batch 5 production are in transit within Canada (by rail) or are in production with local manufacturers. A couple of parts that we are still waiting on that are in transit by sea include:

• Router mounts
• Couplers
• Delrin nuts
• 3D printer filament

The remaining components for Batch 5 are expected to arrive this month but won’t be complete for shipping until these parts arrive.

Manufacturing

There have been a few changes in manufacturing at Sienci Labs. Here are some of the things that have been going on.

One small change is the material that we have made the ACME nuts from, switching from stainless steel to brass. Brass has shown to be easier to work with in terms of manufacturing and forming threads. In previous manufacturing batches, a portion of nuts were rejected due to rough threading that made it difficult to thread onto the lead screws. The new brass nuts are of much better quality.

As part of the transition from steel shoulder brackets and drag chain mounts, Batch 5 kits will use M8-16mm bolts instead of M8-25mm bolts to mount these parts. There is no functional change, as the longer bolts are a carryover from when longer bolts were needed on the 3D printed parts.

Next, we are switching to e-coating our gantries from powder coating. We believe that e-coating is an excellent alternative to powder coating as it provides a cleaner, more consistent surface which is important for our XZ gantry assemblies. In some of our recent batches of powder-coated steel, we were running into issues where paint contamination and dripping would either produce cosmetic defects or affect the assembly of the parts because of the unevenness of the surface. E-coating does have a thinner surface, which theoretically means that it offers less scratch resistance on parts. However, based on samples that we have been provided of our parts after being e-coated, we have seen significantly better resistance to chipping and surface quality, without much difference in scratch resistance. This change should decrease manufacturing costs while improving overall quality.

In the last batch, we switched to using M3 screws with captive washers to help keep the screws from coming loose. For these screws, we have switched from stainless steel screws to Class 12.9 alloy, which is a much stronger screw that will prevent head stripping. Head stripping has been a minor inconvenience as removing stripped screws takes a while.

We’ve added three new CR30s (3D Print Mills), a belt based 3D printer. These machines will add additional 3D printing capacity with the benefit of being able to continually print repeated parts. We are currently in the stage of testing and tuning these machines, but we expect each printer to do the work of 4 standard 3D printers, increasing our print capacity by approximately 25%.

Design

Batch 5 comes with some very minor design changes to the LongMill.

First to mention is that motor shafts on the X and Y will be fully round. This is due to a very small number of customers reporting their motor shafts breaking off. The engineers at LDO Motors and us have confirmed that the full shafts will prevent this.

We are manufacturing a slightly modified 65mm router mount to eliminate the need to use M5-12mm screws. Because of the drill tap depth of the four mounting screws in the back of the router, shorter M5 screws were needed compared to the rest of the machine assembly. With the new router mounts, M5-25mm screws can be used on all parts of the router mount. We have also relocated the additional tapped holes that are used for mounting to the front of the mount for easier installation of accessories such as the LaserBeam.

New ACME Delrin nuts have been manufactured without the counterbore, which were an unnecessary feature for our application.

Shipping

Shipping to US and Canada have been reliable overall and seems to have returned to pre-COVID speeds.

We had some delays with Canada Post shipments going to the US via US Air Parcel, so as an alternative we would recommend using UPS.

We have had several issues with customs for shipments going to Mexico this past month that are new. If you have an order that needs to go to Mexico, please let us know in case we need to make other arrangements.

Hi everyone, this is our April pt 2. and May production update.

If you’re looking to order a machine or waiting on one to show up, please read this update to find out what’s going on in our shop.

For previous production updates, please check our blog (https://sienci.com/blog/).

If you are looking for an update on where your order is on the waiting list, please check our list (https://forum.sienci.com/t/list-of-shipped-machines/1215)

Lead times for new orders

We’re happy to announce that lead times will be dropping from 3-5 weeks to 2-3 weeks!

*UPDATE – We have now cleared our backorder. New orders will ship within one week!*

This comes due to a flattening out in the number of orders we are getting, as well as the additional staff that we’ve brought on to continue packing and shipping machines. We are aiming to keep our lead times within two weeks, however, we are stating our lead time as 2-3 weeks to provide ourselves an additional 2-week buffer for any unforeseeable delays.

It’s exciting to finally get back down to our 2-3 week lead time, as we have seen a major backlog of orders since around June of last year and it wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the Sienci Labs team. As our production capacity meets the demand for the LongMill, this gives us the opportunity to dedicate more time to developing other parts of the company such as marketing, customer support, and technical development. We also expect to see improvements in the productivity and efficiency of our production, giving us more flexibility in the number of machines we can sell and ship.

At the time of writing, we have around 270 machines in stock. We expect to keep our lead times at around 2 weeks until we run out of this stock.

Batch 5 production

We are currently shipping machines for Batch 4 and are producing parts for Batch 5. Parts for Batch 5 will be arriving between May and June. Once we run out of parts for Batch 4, new customers will need to wait for all of the parts in Batch 5 to arrive for us to start shipping again.

Batch 5 will consist of 1000 LongMills.

Commonly asked questions

If you are interested in ordering a LongMill please read this section.

If I place an order today, how long will it take to ship?

2-4 weeks

Is there any way to skip the line/get my machine faster?

• No. To keep things fair for all of our customers, we ship all orders based on when they were ordered. There are no exceptions. The only way to get a machine faster is to order one sooner. If we have updates to the lead time, they will be posted here and on the forum: https://forum.sienci.com/t/list-of-shipped-machines/1215. If you want to see where you are in the queue for your order, please check the forum.

Does it make a difference in when I get my machine if I pick it up?

• The only difference it will make will be that you will not have to wait for the shipping/transit time for the machine to ship. Typically, machines take around 1-3 days to ship within Ontario. Otherwise, there is no difference.

When do you charge my card/take payment for my order?

• Your card will be charged at the time you place your order. This is to ensure your place in line, purchase parts ahead of time, and have the most accurate estimates on production and delivery.

How can I cancel my order?

• You can cancel your order with no penalty any time before your order ships. Please contact us through our website or email us with your order number and a request to make a cancellation. A refund will be processed through your original method of payment.

Can I add other items to my order before it ships?

If you’ve ordered a LongMill and wish to add other items to your order afterwards before it ships, please choose “Local pickup” (for free shipping) and add your LongMill order number. Some items (such as the T-track sets) cannot be combined for shipping.