Posts Tagged ‘moulds’
February 7, 2010
Posted by: gruso
[EDITORIAL]
It’s been a fun weekend, hasn’t it? Ok, perhaps showing us case samples on a Friday, giving us a whole weekend to wait for answers from the factory, didn’t work out all that well. But information has surfaced in the last two days that gives us cause not to freak out. To fully understand what happened here, you need to fully understand injection moulding – which most of us don’t. That means it’s time for a ludicrous cake analogy. The chef has been asked to do some quick tasters. He knows the recipe, and he’s got a totally sweet oven. But in his rush to please us, the cupcakes came out a little sloppy. And although we asked for icing, he didn’t want to mix up a metric ton of the stuff for a handful of cakes.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged cases, evildragon, moulds, mweston | 40 Comments »
January 5, 2010
Posted by: gruso
Tired of being a posterboy for ambiguity, Craig has decided to take a more direct approach to passing on information: sharing the case factory’s emails with us. A little unconventional, but a well received move so far in the forums. We just hope the factory (and “Mr.Michael”) don’t mind.
Let’s try a new way of showing you the situation, we will just copy and paste the emails from the factory:
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged craigix, factory, moulds | 33 Comments »
December 23, 2009
Posted by: gruso
The newly tweaked case parts we’ve so keenly waited for have been photographed at last (at the factory, it would appear). At a glance they don’t look a whole lot different to the last lot, but look closely and you’ll spot the wider LCD slot, and more finesse overall. The next step for these is a journey to Canada, and the unforgiving judgement of Michael Weston – who is probably as eager to say Go as we are to hear it.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged cases, craigix, moulds, mweston | 27 Comments »
December 21, 2009
Posted by: gruso
You’ve probably accepted by now (graciously, no doubt) that there’s no point setting up camp under the mailbox before Christmas. Valuable information when you’re under four feet of snow. Sadly for team Pandora there is no such respite, with two notable milestones plonked right in the middle of the silly season. The second lot of revised cases (featuring tweaked LCD ribbon slots and shoulder buttons) is set to ship on the 23rd, while the final CE test has been booked in by ED for the 28th. Sorry OP Ltd, there’s work to be done. Step away from the eggnog. (Thanks to tipsters Bosbeetle and mali.)
Sources: [1] [2] [3] | Discuss here!
Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged cases, ce, evildragon, moulds, mr hanky | 9 Comments »
December 16, 2009
Posted by: gruso
Toned shoulders, bigger slots, shaved something-or-others. These are the case revisions we wait for; this weekend is the time frame we hope for.
The cases will probably arrive with Michael at the weekend if we are lucky. They should be the final ones.
So it looks like units won’t ship to customers in large numbers until (probably) after Christmas.
I’m sure Michael will make up more units, but it’s going to be small numbers before Christmas, probably for devs.
When you get your Pandora and see just how perfected it is you will understand the delays. (craigix)
Source
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Posted in Community, Hardware | Tagged cases, craigix, moulds, peca, survey | 14 Comments »
December 3, 2009
Posted by: gruso
This isn’t news yet, but we’re all starving for status updates so it’s worth sharing what we have. The current information from China (mined from the German boards by Mali) is that they’ve declared the moulds complete, and are shipping / have shipped the remaining test pieces out – complete with production matte finish. The final say lies with Mr Weston of course, who eagerly awaits their arrival. Craig expanded on this via some forum Q&A (questions are from various GP32Xers and may be paraphrased, but you’ll hardly notice).
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Posted in Hardware, Official, Software | Tagged appstore, Boards, craigix, moulds, mweston | 72 Comments »
November 29, 2009
Posted by: gruso
First, an apology from PandoraPress for copy/pasting this tale of shrinkage so long after the fact (“I was in the pool!”). Second, an apology from ED for excitedly jumping the gun last week upon seeing the new case parts. And who could blame him?
Your all waiting for more shiny case pictures, right? Well… we all are.
However, I did make a fault with my last blog post – as the pictures had been released, I assumed the shipment to Michael was on the way. It isn’t yet – sorry about that, I was so excited about that myself, I really thought it was on the way.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged Boards, evildragon, moulds | 36 Comments »
November 25, 2009
Posted by: atomicthumbs
Craig has posted new photos of the parts from the Pandora test injection. Keep in mind that these are test parts, and so aren’t as shiny as the final parts. Here you see the top of the Pandora’s case, with holes for everything. Read more for more photos.
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Posted in Hardware, Official, Pandora | Tagged Case, case mould, craigix, Hardware, mass production, moulds, production | 48 Comments »
November 24, 2009
Posted by: gruso
Moulds… finished? No way!
What? Another blog post? And still no pictures of the finished case?
Well… yes. but I thought you might be interested in the (good this time!) news we have.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged evildragon, moulds, production | 31 Comments »
November 18, 2009
Posted by: gruso
ED has followed up today’s tantalising Texan photos with an official blog post, and some pictures of his own.
We’ve got some good news! 103 out of the 105 boards did pass the test, this is slightly more than 98% success rate!
TI set up a unique testing environment, especially for the Pandora boards. With a special firmware, every hardware piece of the Pandora can be checked with as little human interaction as possible.
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Posted in Hardware, Official, Software | Tagged Boards, evildragon, moulds, silkscreen, themes, xfce | 67 Comments »
November 3, 2009
Posted by: gruso
We’ll deal with the not-so-shiny news first, then we’ll get onto those mysterious photos. The not-so-shiny news is that we won’t be seeing the first production cases this week:
Sorry everyone,
I had to pull the countdown timer. I dared to be brave and got bit in the ass once again. 
Craig suggested I was crazy but there didn’t seem to be anything else that could be screwed up at this point and I even factored in a couple extra days.
There was one part coming out of the molds messed up and they were to fix it, make new parts and ship everything tonight. Now, two more molds need the extra treatment and will take a few more days. I’m hoping they ship new parts this weekend but no more count downs. Unbelievable.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged Boards, Case, craigix, moulds, mweston | 75 Comments »
October 19, 2009
Posted by: gruso
Just in case you missed the latest update to the unofficial roadmap (don’t feel bad if you did, it’s only been there a few hours), MWeston had been advised by the case factory in China that the mould completion date would be October 23rd at worst. Now he’s heard from them again, and believe it or not, they were bearing good news…
I just got another confirmation that actual injected parts will ship to me next week. Some of the molds are completely done right now, others (I suspect the more complicated ones like base bottom, outer lid and definitely hinge mechanism area on base top) are still being shaved and tweaked this week. I asked if the delays were because they were still cutting them or if they were testing them and thankfully the delays are because they are testing them. They have an NDS lite as a reference for the color (within a few shades, not necessarily 100% exact), matte finish and build quality that we are looking for (except for hinge build quality, our parts are much thicker there). That was the easiest way to get over the language barrier that always gets in the way. “You make this now!” seemed easier. 
Hoping for the best as always…
Oh, and second wave production PCBs (3895) were ordered on Sept. 30 just to get in the queue. We knew they wouldn’t be starting until after the Chinese holiday anyway which is how it went down but we wanted our place in line. That gave us time to resubmit modified files if we had to before they did anything, but not lose our place. The boards should be deep into formatting and CAM inspection by now and perhaps already into the etching stage of inner layers.
Source
Posted in Hardware | Tagged Boards, moulds, mweston, production | 48 Comments »
September 29, 2009
Posted by: gruso
Golden Week has descended, EvilDragon has spoken. Looks like we’ll be waiting until the other end of the Chinese break to see our moulds, which means another week or so. Hey, don’t act all surprised. The good news is, the team will be working to make up this lost time elsewhere.
Hi,
while the moulds are still in production, the 105 boards were pretty sturdy, we didn’t encounter a single problem yet which is really cool.
Our initial plan was to wait for the first final cases and then do the CE / FCC with a final unit. After that, we wanted to produce the rest of the 4000 boards (and cases, of course) and ship them.
However, as the cases need a bit longer, we decided to speed up the boards mass production. As soon as Michael gets the final nubs (which should arrive soon), he’s gonna ship a complete prototype Pandora to me (in Germany), and we’ll do a quick CE testing with that one. If that one passes the testings, the Pandora in the final case will also do so (as a plastic case doesn’t add radiation). This does mean that we can immediately start the mass production of the boards after that – which speeds up the whole thing by a few weeks. The only downside is that we have to do a second testing with a final unit to get all the FCC certifications and therefore have a bit more costs – but it’s definately worth it.
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Posted in Official | Tagged ce, evildragon, fcc, moulds, production | 35 Comments »
September 18, 2009
Posted by: gruso
Once again, a fairly slow news week book-ended by a few signs of life. It’s not all great news up in this post, but it’s not that horrid either. First up are a couple of nice new renders from Evildragon. You’ve probably met your dietary intake requirement for renders by now, but a couple more can’t hurt. Especially when they show off some details that more than a few people have been hanging on. Up top is the keymat, showing the final font and (some of) the final layout. At bottom is the revised Pandora base, showing more secure battery clips and other minor refinements.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged Battery, evildragon, keymat, moulds, production | 72 Comments »
September 3, 2009
Posted by: gruso
Case moulds. They’re slow old things to make. When will the moulds be done? Soon. What are we waiting for? The moulds. Thanks blog people, big help. But maybe not everyone out there knows exactly what these moulds are? If that’s you, pull up a pew. Rather than reinvent the wheel, we’ll just tap into some existing educational resources. This technology students page offers a (deceptively) simple overview of the moulding process. They’re not making a gaming handheld, but they are making a blue hedgehog… it’s the best we could do. (You don’t have to take the test at the end). For a more serious read, there’s the slightly less fun Wikipedia page. Pandora’s moulds are currently in the machining phase.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged evildragon, moulds, website | 13 Comments »
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