Category: Production Updates

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.

Hi everyone, here is our April production updates. 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 are happy to announce that we will be shortening our lead time from 4-6 weeks to 3-5 weeks! It’s been a big effort by the operations team to slowly start whittling away on our lead times.

Why the change? Well we have a couple of factors.

First of all, most of the machine orders we’ve received, we’ve been able to ship within 3 weeks this month. Having kept this up for the last little bit, we feel confident that we can continue shipping this rate and it is likely that orders that are currently waiting on their machines should see them a little earlier than initially stated on our estimate.

The second is with the availability of parts. With the exception (at this current moment) ACME locking nuts and touch plate wiring which are expected to arrive in the next 1-2 weeks, we have around 2 months of stock remaining. This means that we have the parts here in the shop, and the bottleneck is with how quickly we can pack, assemble, and ship parts.

That being said, Batch 5 parts are now in production and most of the parts that will go into Batch 5 will arrive at the end of April and middle of March. This means that if we sell out of our current stock before then, there will likely be a gap where shipping will be on pause as we prepare to ship Batch 5 machines. At the time of writing, we have 319 machines in stock.

Once we start to run low on stock, I will post another update to let everyone know.

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?

3-5 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.

Hi everyone, this is our March production update. If you are looking to order a machine or if you’re waiting on your machine to come in, please read this to find out what’s happening in the 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

The current lead time for LongMills is 4-6 weeks.

Production has continued to move smoothly. Our February update mentioned that we were running low on aluminum rails and steel gantries. I am happy to announce that these parts have arrived and we won’t need to stop shipping due to these parts. We are still waiting on the ACME locking nuts but the manufacturer has confirmed that they are completed and should be on the way soon, so we should be ok with those parts as well.

Our manufacturer for the rails has noted that the finish and quality of the new rails looks to be better than the last batch, which we are happy about.

We have also restocked on a few other parts, including packaging material, shoulder brackets, drag chain mounts, and acrylic parts, and we expect to have another large batch of parts arrive mid to late April.

I believe we are also now back in stock for all of our end mills and cutting tools.

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?

4-6 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.

Production updates

No major updates for production, we are packing and shipping machines on a regular basis. That being said, there’s lots of other interesting things going on at Sienci Labs that you can read about on our blog: https://sienci.com/blog/

Hello everyone, here is our February Production update. 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)

Please note that Feb 15 is a statutory holiday and we will be closed on that day.

Lead times for new orders

The current lead time for LongMills is 4-6 weeks.

Production has been going at a rapid pace. We have hired 7-8 new staff, 5 of which work in production, packing, and operations to help us catch up on the new backorders.

At the time of writing, just over half of Batch 4 machines have been sold and we are currently in the process of ordering parts for Batch 5.

The current lead time is expected to stay at 4-6 weeks as we expect that our production speed will be limited to a couple of different parts as they are in the process of being manufactured. At the current time these include:

• Aluminum rails
• ACME locking nuts
• Steel gantries

Our manufacturers are working to produce these parts as quickly as possible and we expect to receive these parts in the next couple of weeks.

Some end mills and other add-ons are low or out of stock. We expect some end mills to be back in stock in the next week or two, and the remaining stock to be available at the start of March.

Commonly asked questions

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

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.

Production updates

We have been incredibly busy in the recent months, especially as we’ve had our team grow by over 50% since the beginning of the year.

Here are some changes that we’ve made to improve production:

• Dedicated staff for inventory tracking, QA, and production using automated systems
• Dedicated staff for each packing and assembly station
• Redesign or re-engineering of parts, such as the shoulder brackets and drag chain mount, to alleviate load off the 3D printer farm
• Dedicated staff to run the 3D printer farm
• Use of new automated printing technologies to improve printing throughput
• Reorganization and labelling of stations and parts to make things easier to find
• Use of custom manufacturing certain parts to improve part quality and better control over lead times

We are also working on:

• Improved systems to test electronics, as well as making improvements to our electronics themselves
• New packing tools to reduce the chance of missing parts in kits
• Redesign of machine components to improve manufacturability and performance

A big part of our effort is to improve efficiency, quality, and throughput of our shop to catch up to our backorders. Our goal is to scale our production to be able to handle up to 300 LongMills per month.

Here are some challenges:

• The volume of parts that we are now asking from our manufacturers is reaching a point where we may need to have more than one manufacturer make each part
• Shipping couriers are sometimes not able to handle the volume on their trucks on regular pick-ups
• COVID 19 slowdowns with shipping have affected incoming parts as well as shipping orders. Additionally, shipments going lost or missing shipments have been higher than before