Hola Backers,
So we’re in the middle of the molding process with the charger and earbuds. That doesn’t mean we’ve been taking it slow, hell no! We used that time to make a few tweaks and a light drop test. Molds are scheduled to be ready at the end of May (most likely) or beginning of June. Once that happens, we’ll smash the pre-production start button, BAM!
DEVELOPMENT STATUS
Okay, so let’s make this update with more pictures and fewer words.
The charger mold is being built since the beginning of the month. It usually takes 6-12 weeks to finish. For the earbuds’ molds, we were supposed to make only slight modifications to our earlier molds. But in collaboration with our mold maker, we realized there was a slight chance these minor edits could cause defects during the plastic injection process. Therefore, we decided to make brand new molds. That means the earbuds & charger are scheduled to be ready at the same time.
That’s the molds’ progress as of today. Looking good so far!
While it may look like they are almost finished, the molds need a couple of revisions to make sure they’re exactly as requested. We’ll begin by making “first shots” which consists of making the first injection plastic parts and see if it’s as desired. These are rarely perfect the first time, so iterations are in order.
To make sure the source files to create the molds were fully accurate, we made 3D prints before.
Concerning the charging case, we noticed the glow of the P logo was not how we wanted it to be. The look of the LED light was sub-optimal, so we had to change the design to improve this aspect.
This small edit makes the LED shine uniformly across the P logo.
This is how it looks. Please note that unlike what is shown in this picture, the area outside of the P will not radiate light. With the real plastic (and not 3D print material) it will look much better.
DROP TEST
Okay since we only had 3D prints, we could not make those insane drop tests we wanted yet. BUT, we still made a few, here’s an example:
Okay so sure, the tech inside the charger is not rocket science but still pretty convenient.
The test unit for the drops. No, these are not Hulk’s earbuds :p
The extreme drop tests will be made once we’ll be in pre-production with the real plastic and not some 3D prints material. The goal of those tests was to make sure our PCB’s charger could hold on at least to this minimum.
So we’re a bit behind schedule concerning the timeline we provided at the end of February. That’s due to the earbuds’ molds that needed to be rebuilt from scratch. We were able to make more progress on other fronts so it’s unclear at this point if we’ll have to re-adjust the shipping estimate. We’ll know more by the next update.
What to expect in the next update:
Take care guys,
Chris and the Phazon team