Posted a number of days ago (and shot a number of weeks ago, evidently), Craig gives us a speed run through a day on the floor at assembly HQ. Yep, the entire British console industry in that little room – it’ll either warm your heart or give you a start. Tell us which below, it’ll be fun.
Craig Rothwell, Michael Weston, Michael Mrozek, M. Fatih KILIC
Back from the weekend, back from hell, same same.
Wow, that were some 1,5 weeks in Newcastle, building Pandoras – and meeting Craig and Fatih again after all these years. And Michael for the first time ever! Okay, and it wasn’t hell – but I liked the sound of it, so I used it as blog title
(BTW: We hid a group picture somewhere…) (not so well hidden now – gruso)We had a lot of work to do. It took as a couple of days to setup everything, check out everything is okay and start building the units.
Craig and Fatih have been pumpin’ out the production line pics. If your only news source was taken down by a freak traffic spike on the weekend, here’s what you missed.
We all knew it was coming, it was inevitable that someone on the Open Pandora team was going to crack and go insane. It looks like Evil Dragon is the first to openly admit, he lost his mind. Thankfully it didn’t happened until after mass production started.
Though, one could argue the entire team were lunatics right from the beginning, no sane person would willingly subject themselves to what this project has put on them.
EvilDragon on the official blog:
It finally happened!
… I’m slightly maaad!
Well, yes, that’s basically also true… but this time, another thing came true: The Pandora!
Yep, we started assembling and already shipped out some of our babies yesterday! What a relief!Craig, Michael and Fatih are already working together with other folks to build Pandoras, I’ll join them on Monday. I’ll also setup the webcam when I’m there.
Hopefully, it will work, as Craig told me internet connection in that hall is not too reliable, but we’ll see.While this certainly is a big step for us, there’s still a lot of work to be done. We have to try to finish the first batch as soon as possible and also have to manage parts and production for the second batch.
Please bear with us if this could take a while, we’re still humans (no cyborgs) and are working as fast as we can.Thanks to EVERYONE helping us – our devs, our wifes / girlfriends, and – of course – you. The community. Let the fun begin!
This is the email that a handful of lucky folk have received today. It’s a slow and steady start, but with Fatih due to arrive tomorrow, EvilDragon arriving on Monday, and other volunteers on the way including benevolent forum mod x68000, production should hit 88mph in no time. If you’ve received your confirmation email, insert gloat below!
Behold, a painted and assembled Pandora. Click to zoom and enhance, and be warned, they’re large. As outlined in Tuesday’s festival of edits, the only verification needed on these painted cases was that they would fit together nicely. The factory has had a set of Pandora internals on hand for some time, so were able to throw this together and confirm that none of the finely tuned case tolerances are upset by the lick of paint. (They’ve also sent MWeston a painted review case, but only because it was easier for him to to say yes than no. He doesn’t need to wait for it.)
Bums have been on the edge of seats today as we awaited news from the PCB and case factories, both of which had agreed to ship their stuff by the weekend. And while you may wish to keep one buttock on the threshold of your pew, some scraps of photographic reassurance have materialised. The neatly packed boxes in the first photo are said to contain “all the parts apart from the cases,” confirmation that the frosted shower screen in front of the camera is located somewhere in Texas. No such logistic finality from the case factory, typically, but they have produced some cases that could not possibly need to be tweaked further. The finish comes courtesy of a paint job, with the fabulous pink version a possible sign of future case options. Although both would look much better wrapped in brown cardboard, jah?
Fatih has received a couple of new photos from China, showing the inside and outside of the upper half of the lower section of the Pandora. Yes, this is one of those situations where you’re far better off just looking at the pictures. For those who like clues with their news, these pictures were posted under the album name “From the 1000s club”.
With the latest advice telling us that the first 1,000 cases (yes, those cases) would ship out of China on the 26th, today was as good a day as any to start hitting F5 for an update. Craig chimed in with this:
We’re not letting them ship without sending us the photos first. Should have photos in the next 10 hours. (source)
Craig tweets:
Looks like everything will have arrived here by the 22nd. How exciting.
EvilDragon tweets:
Production, here we come! Just confirmed with Fatih, cases will arrive in UK March 22nd. We’ll have the assembly site ready by then! Go!
Craig elaborates:
(The 22nd) is when everything should be here, including the cases. To be on the safe side we probably won’t start until a few days after that.
I feel a lot more confident about this now we are back in control.
Our own assembly line, this will work far far better for batch 2 and so on. It should always have been like this.
Perhaps not quite the news you were waiting for today, but solid information beats cold silence in most cases. This gives Craig ample time to set up the new production line with things like ESD protection and business hammocks, and ED the opportunity to set up the best webcam feed this side of the Thames. Whatever that means.
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