n case you missed this last update over on Kickstarter, here it is!
Welcome to our monthly major update and rundown of what's been going on here at HQ. We've made some great progress on things and wanted to share with you some of the issues we've been working through on the project with some components of the drivers. It's been a busy time for us here as we push suppliers and ourselves to hit the tight deadlines we've set so that things happen on time and we are now starting to see some of the final production parts turn up ready for the final assembly!
QC visit
First up on the list is our biggest happening, the mammoth quality check! So, this involved going around to all the suppliers now they've made and applied the surface finishes to all of the major parts of the drivers.
To anyone new to the process, we do this process before it leaves the factories, so that we're able to easily fix or re-make any parts that fail the QC process, without waiting time shipping them around and then finding the problems when it's too late. (learnt that the very hard way 😬)
What we do is take 30 random samples of each part from the batches and put them under a microscope, if there are any issues in the batch then that entire batch is pulled and checked fully in further detail.
We have abbreviated the full report as most of the parts have passed with flying colours, so that's the good news. We did pick up on a few parts that we were not totally happy with. One of those is the chucks, then some of the bent arms and a few of the handles for the bit holder.
We're starting with the bad stuff as I always like to finish on a positive note!
The chucks
As you can see there are some cosmetic dents, after we investigated this was annoyingly caused not by the machine shop, but when they were sent out to be heat treated they were not packaged adequately, so they dented each other in transit... This is an ongoing battle we have with trying to get engineering businesses to make products where the visual matters! This didn't affect all of the parts but around 30% are already being remade/polished up. At least we can use the rest of the parts straight away!
Bent arms
These parts are actually not too bad all things considered with how weird the parts are, but a good number of them were scratched, again poor packaging between the fabrication shop and the polishing shop. This one is easier to fix and is just involving us re-polishing the arms.
Tool handle
This one was a bit unexpected and not something we have come across before, so when the parts have been anodised and treated, the shape caused an unusual stress fracture in the part, as can been seen in the image. It looks like the part has been thinned by the acid etch prior to the electrolysis or anodising process (well worth looking up on youtube if you have never seen it before) then during the final phases it has fractured.
But getting back to it, this was localised to just this one part and affected about 300 of them in total, so these are currently back in the machine shop for round 2!
On the left are the fails, on the right are the passes in this particular batch so you can see the problem is not affecting all of the parts.
Final production sample
From the above process we were able to put together a finished driver with all of the production parts in our office. This was the final test of all of the parts and minor modifications we have made as we have been going along, and we are pleased to say that everything from the anti vibration adhesive dots explored in the last update, to the minor handle tweaks are looking good and work as planned.
New Silver Driver
We have now got the driver to match our shiny MetMo Pen, this took a surprising amount of effort but was well worth the time spent!
Tiny Box Time
We're not big fans of producing more waste with packaging than we have to, but with the use of our fulfilment centres we couldn't guarantee the add-on parts would be handled correctly, so we designed these insanely cute little boxes for our upgrades.
We loosely styled them around how spark plugs used to be boxed and we now have all of these in our store room ready for when we get all of the parts. They also carry a link to some instructions on how to dismantle and change that part of the driver, so if you are giving it as a gift it wont be like a challenge from the crystal maze to rebuild your driver.
Packaging
All of the MetMo Driver packaging has now arrived! We have 8500 boxes, corrugated inserts and box liners ready to go when we get all of the driver parts. It sounds minor, but these things often get forgotten about and cause delays. The team will start to assemble boxes and get them put together in preparation for packing the drivers over the next month.
Upgraded extenders
We decided that our original drive bit extenders just weren't doing it for us. So we went and splashed out a bit and upgraded them to quick release. Because we don't design bit extenders we had a hard time finding really good ones that we were happy with, we thought we had some good stuff but whilst doing some repair work in the kitchen with them, the magnets just fell out of one of them... in short we were not impressed.
So we went back to the drawing board and found these much nicer quick release bit holders. These combine a magnet and physical lock, with the added advantage that the bit can't get stuck in the screw head and be lost forever down a hole! We've been using these and they are a much better product and they also look great when plugged into a driver too!
Sticky brass bit conclusion
This is the conclusion of the blue dot anti-vibration adhesive we mentioned earlier, check out our last update for the full rundown of what happened here. But to summarise there was way too much of it applied on our pre production run, and it permanently fixed parts in place. The solution was a very simple application of a single dot.
This now works as intended, protecting this part from loosening during use and allowing you to dismantle the driver, for servicing and repair.
Timelines and deadlines
We are still working to our original deadlines, some of the fixes from the QC process have pushed us into our buffer window, so instead of shipping at the start of November it is looking more like the end of November, we are trying to mitigate this as much as possible by splitting up the shipments into smaller batches and investing in AirMail for parts that need to be re-machined to keep us on track as much as possible.
We will continue to keep you updated as things develop and as we find solutions and work arounds for the problems. Overall there is nothing drastic that has gone wrong and for the quantity of parts we are dealing with the timeline has not been too badly affected and we might just be overly cautious moving the shipping date back a bit, but thought this would be realistic at this point.
Premises upgrade
Just a little bit of general company progress for you, Over the past few years we have gone from working in my living room mocking things up in the shed, to a small office and workshop in the centre of Leeds, with an ever expanding storage space where the products are assembled and dispatched from a second location.
We have decided to move across town to a place where we can all be together with more space to design and build! It marks the progress we have made in 3 years with your help and support, so a huge thank you for your ongoing support for our small business, together we have built a team and a company that can really create freely and you are 100% a part of that and one that would not have been possible without the kickstarter platform. So a huge thank you for sticking with us!
A sneak peek at the new unit! on a sunny day in the UK...
And just as a side note the moving around is all within our schedule and will not affect any delivery timelines.
Thanks again for for all of your support and feedback, as always if I have missed anything you would like to know just drop us a message or a comment, always happy to drop in some more details.
Until the next update stay safe in this crazy world!