Let’s cut to the chase – there will be no mass production cases shipped before Chinese New Year. Despite the keen promises of the factory (4,000 before CNY) and the more realistic quantity requested by OP Ltd (500), employees giddy for the impending break did not meet the target.
Posts Tagged ‘production’
Not this week folks
February 13, 2010
Posted by: gruso
“So, green lighted.”
February 8, 2010
Posted by: gruso
We spoke to the factory over night, everything is cool. Those errors were because the machine was not warmed up/tweaked/cooled. They would never mass produce something with such errors.
They just assumed we would know that.
So, green lighted.
(craigix)
Update: EvilDragon elaborates on the green light and reflects on one of the most tumultuous weekends the project has seen, in a new post on the official blog. Congratulations, team Pandora.
Video: Craig’s Pandora
December 15, 2009
Posted by: gruso
Chances are that some time in the last year, you’ve sat a moment and pondered just how exciting it’s going to be your Pandora arrives. If we’ve learned anything today, it’s that the Pandora team themselves pretty much feel the same way. When Craig’s Pandora turned up today (fresh from MWeston’s microwave), he didn’t just start the kind of thread we all hope to post in soon, he stayed up until 5am to give us some video. Good show.
The sum of its parts
December 9, 2009
Posted by: gruso
So, here it is; assembled, booted, sitting there winning. It’s lacking the final matte finish the next 3,895 will get, and we have to wait until tomorrow for the highly anticipated Big Green Light from Michael Weston. But we’re told the hinge works beautifully, and more assembled units will appear in the coming hours, to be shipped out to various dev team members. If any vapour hangs in the air today, it is the outward breath of a thousand satisfied sighs.
[Update] Moving pictures have appeared on Youtube.
Testing, testing 123.
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.
Official blog: Nearly there!
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.
Photos: Some (some) mass production case parts
November 13, 2009
Posted by: gruso
Like a jpeg on a dialup connection, so too appear the parts of our Pandoras. Pictured here amongst the jagged FDM prototype pieces are some butter smooth mass production parts, and you won’t need to be told which is which. The eleventh hour fixes on the last part of the case mould mean that we can’t see every component today, but here’s to China for shipping out what they could, rather than make us wait for the lot. More parts are in transit as we speak, but a weekend stands between us and them.
Twitterix: The case race
October 29, 2009
Posted by: gruso
Toot toot, all aboard the hype train. A tweet from Craig:
Finally, the cases ship at the weekend!
Thankfully Craig was standing by in the forums to expand on this essay. The bolded questions below have been paraphrased from forum comments to give the quotes a bit of context. As always, read the discussion on GP32X for the full picture.
Silkscreening ahoy
October 25, 2009
Posted by: atomicthumbs
Recently posted to MWeston’s Photobucket account were these renders of the planned labels to be printed onto the Pandora cases. Highlights include a snazzy “First Batch” text and a Pandora logo. Rear labels after the break. Read the rest of this entry ?
This injection won’t hurt a bit
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.
Shields up, run the replicators
October 15, 2009
Posted by: atomicthumbs
ED has posted another post on the official blog:
Well, Michael has already begun to wrap up one of those LCD cables in a nice shield. Those foils are REALLY thin, so there’s nothing we need to change with the case. It’s an easy fix.
The other thing you might want to know is that we placed our order for the production of those 3895 boards. Yep, mass production of the motherboards has started!
Now all that’s left to do is wait for the chinese company to finish the moulds. Yeeha!
Good news all around!
Preorders and refreshments
October 12, 2009
Posted by: gruso
There’s barely a morsel of news to chew today, and it may stay that way until Wednesday. But there are some recurring questions appearing on the forums, so this might be a good time to catch a few people up on the current situation.
The preorder queue
If you’ve sent OpenPandora an email in the past week, you may still be waiting on a reply. Don’t worry, it’s not just you. They have received a flood of order enquiries following the recent mailout (and Engadget coverage). If you don’t get a reply right away, you’ve at least secured a spot in the email queue. Craig says:
There are way more *requests* for orders than there are Pandoras left, however quite a lot of the requests never become paid up orders.
Also people cancel orders for various reasons from time to time, so those become available too.
So it’s definitely worth emailing, and if you pay quickly then you are guaranteed a Pandora.
The demand is so big we are considering allowing some of the 150 reserved for webstores to be sold direct to customers, as they are not all sold yet.
Got mail?
October 1, 2009
Posted by: gruso
Hark, a blue moon is risen. One of those rare-as-hens-teeth OpenPandora newsletters has started to appear in mailboxes around the planet, heralding the beginning of the end of our long pre-order journey. If you’re not on the mailing list, or it hasn’t arrived yet, a small excerpt is below. Follow the source link for the full text, and make sure you browse the rest of the thread; there’s some direct Q&A with Craig, and it all sounds rather lovely.
Hello everyone, Craig here,
This is the last OpenPandora newsletter before we start shipping Pandora consoles to customers.
Yes, we have finally, after a lot of serious tweaking, decided the Pandora is ready to roll.
In October the factory will start to populate 4000 Pandora PCBs, this will be a slow process at first which will become substantially faster after the initial 800. As the PCBs are completed, they are tested then put in to cases, boxed up and shipped out to you.
Official blog: Speed it up!
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.
atomicthumbs
BackAssward
Butterman
gruso
tom
What's this?