Ship Arrived, Packing Boxes, Fixing Bugs...the Usual

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

This week we’ve been hard at work packing boxes, making software improvements, tracking down bugs, and getting ready for our second container of parts to arrive.

OOCL New York Arrived

After its brief detour to Canada, the OOCL New York carrying our second container of parts arrived in the port. Because of the timing of the ship arriving during local pickup hours (when we needed to be at the office for anyone picking up a kit in person) we didn’t film it from the space needle like last time, but we were able to catch the ship arriving in the port and film the unloading process which was quite exciting to see.

Unfortunately our container was flagged by customs for extra inspections, but fortunately it was a relatively smooth process so that only added a few days delay and our container is scheduled to be delivered to us tomorrow.

We asked if we could have a copy of the X-ray of our container to share with y’all but they said no. They asked why we wanted a copy of the X-ray and we said it was to share with our customers who would think it was cool, but I don’t think they believed us. I guess it’s reasonable that they wouldn’t want to share those X-rays because they could be used by people who are actually smuggling to hide things better.

This could have gone so much worse. I have in the past had issues with orders containing large numbers of motors being taken for long periods of time because the pallets of motors are dense blocks of metal which are impossible to see inside of on the X-ray. Instead they have to get inspected by hand which can take weeks. A few days delay is not the end of the world. It will be interesting to see if our container has been opened or just X-rayed when it arrives tomorrow.

Shipping Update

Insider Edition - Shipping complete! We are waiting on shipping information from a few stragglers, so if you haven't seen your kit yet, reach out.

Batch 1 - Shipping is complete! Our first Batch 1 local pickup is today at our office.

Batch 2 - Shipping has begun! We are a little behind schedule for Batch 2 and with our shipping container arriving tomorrow, some of Batch 2 will push into next week.

Batch 3 - Shipping will likely begin on the 10th. Batch 3 may push into the next week as well due to the shipping container arrival mentioned above.

Website Pre-Orders - Shipping the week of April 15th and 22nd and probably the week of the 29th as well.

While we are slightly behind our estimate from last week, this restock allows us to totally re-arrange our packing space. Early on, we were experimenting with different packing sequences, and the current order of operations which was developed seems to have reduced instances of parts breaking. So now we have the opportunity to reset the space to match our finalized packing plan. We will report back if we see a change in volume of kits packed per day!

Local Pickup

If you would like to volunteer for local pickup, please email Anna at anna@maslowcnc.com. She will email you with directions when your kit is ready for pickup. Here is a general pickup schedule

Insider Edition - Today(4/3) between 4 and 7 pm. Email Anna if you plan to stop by.

Batch 1 - Today(4/3 )between 4 and 7 pm. Email Anna if you plan to stop by.

Batch 2 - between 9am and 4pm on 4/13(a Saturday and our In-Person Build Day)

Batch 3 - between 4 and 7pm on 4/16 and 4/18

We are also planning to host a second In-Person Build Day for those of you in Batch 3 and pre-orders, though the date is not yet finalized.

We’ve recruited our friend Melanie to help pack and ship kits faster. Here you can see her showing off a batch of PCBs packed with the new protective system.

Software Updates

We have a ton of exciting firmware updates this week in v0.67. The big ones are that you can now edit your settings without needing to deal with the hassle of the .yaml file! This is thanks to a BRILLIANT pull request from @ronlawrence3 .

This update request also brings a lot of small quality of life updates and some pretty big improvements to the code behind the calibration process.

To get all the benefits this week you will need to update the firmware along with the index.html and maslow.yaml files.

As always you can find the latest firmware updates here:

https://github.com/BarbourSmith/FluidNC/releases/tag/v0.67

New Belt Guards

One of the issues that we’ve run into is that folks are getting their belts stuck in the drive gears. This can only happen during the calibration process when all four belts aren’t tight, but with so many folks doing the calibration process right now it’s coming up fairly often. Luckily we’ve got lots of spares coming in the next container so there’s no shortage of them, but we would also like to find a better long term solution.

Right now we’re testing an updated and improved belt guard which should help to keep the belt and the gears far apart so keep a lookout for that in the future if it seems to work well.