Buyers (and watchers) of X1Plus Expander,
I can’t believe it’s been nearly a month since I wrote to you last, but wow has a lot of stuff been happening! Mostly, my apartment has been invaded by boxes. Many boxes. An enormous amount of boxes. Before I tell you all about them (mostly show, actually — this is going to be a picture-heavy post!), let me give you the short update that most of you probably will actually care about.
The Boring But Useful Stuff
Timing & Tariffs
I think the good news I have is that I am, like, within spitting distance of shipping. The moderately bad news I have is that I’m officially slipping the schedule by a few weeks. I’m hoping to get the first shipment in the mail to Mouser by the end of April. My understanding is that, like, by the standards of crowdfunded manufacturing programs, this is pretty good! But all the same I’d rather do what I said than not make my commitments, so for that, please accept my apologies.
I assume that you have some questions about how tariffs will impact the program. The answer is: I have absolutely no idea because literally everything is changing every single day! All the same, here is my best summary of the situation right now.
For US customers of Expander, most of Expander’s parts are already in the US (and therefore, the tariffs have already been dealt with). For you, there should be no impact.
The only thing that is not yet in the US is a handful of X1P-800 SLS cases. 100 of them are supposed to arrive by DHL today (have they cleared customs yet? I’m not sure!). But I owe Mouser 314 of them, which is more than 100. This means that I’m going to have to order the rest, if the first 100 look good, and depending on how the genitalia-measuring contest in Washington is resolved, I may have to pay quite some tariffs on those. My margins were pretty thin on those to begin with, and I may have to eat into my margins from Expander itself to cover the tariffs on those. That’s the cost of doing business, I guess, and anyway it’s not your problem, I just like to complain.
For non-US customers of Expander, I have no idea what’s going to happen by the time Mouser ships you your Expanders. Expander is going to ship from the US, but is going to be labeled as having a Chinese Country of Origin. If your country imposes reciprocal tariffs on shipments from the US, I expect that you may have a bad time. But if your country only imposes reciprocal tariffs on products from the US, then you should be ok. On behalf of the remaining reasonable people in my country, I’m sorry.
A Word About H2D, AMS HT, etc.
Congratulations to our friends at Bambu Lab on their launch of their new printer, H2D — and its enormous amount of accessories and consumables! I’m trying to stock five different SKUs, and here are the big boys over there launching like 30 different items all at once. The machine is impressive, but from the perspective of what I’ve learned over the past few months, the logistics are what are really blowing me away.
I do not expect that Expander will work with H2D. I’m not sure what the story will be for AMS 2 Pro and AMS HT on X1Plus yet — I assume that Bambu are going to update X1’s firmware to support the new devices, and I think it’s an open question how easy or hard it is going to be to backport support for those to X1Plus. Probably the reality is that after I get Expander (and its initial firmware) shipped, I’m going to give myself a nice break from X1Plus-related things, since this has truly been all-consuming! So you should expect that the new AMS devices will not (initially, anyway) be usable on X1Plus, but it is possible that they will be supported in the future.
In the mean time, you know, if anyone at Bambu is listening, I’ll be happy to trade you an Expander for a H2D. Just say the word. (Unless that would violate the terms of my exclusivity with Crowd Supply. In that case, uh, pretend I didn’t say anything.)
The Pretty Pictures
Ok, here we go. Let’s talk about what’s actually been showing up in my house.
Expander Mainboards Are Here!
The DHL man came a few days after my previous update! He actually came in two separate days, with three boxes. Here’s one colossal box.
I’ve been running those through the test jig, which I talked about last time. I’ve been busily writing some software to run my production line, too — I recently discovered NiceGUI, and it’s a truly lovely way to hook up my Python test jig to my browser so I can get nice bright ‘pass’ and ‘fail’ messages on screen. So far, I’ve run 50 of these through my test jig, and yield is pretty good — the only fallout so far is a single unit from, I think, a test issue. Testing and packing these takes like a minute each. Friends, I am going to have a bad time. If you live in the Bay Area, and want to help, please let me know and I will order takeout and you can come help me pack these up.
Expander Modules Are Here!
The DHL man also came a week or two ago! Many many modules are now all over my office in boxes.
Of course, I built a jig for these, too.
You can see it at work!
Screws Are Here!
There was a good old THUNK from the DHL man as 2,400 M3 screws arrived on my front doorstep. Anyone want to help me, uh, pick screws into baggies?
Production Sample Cases Are Here!
I finished up the CAD for the case and had a handful of them sent out for SLS. They look really good! I made a few more tweaks before production to try to improve the behavior of the flexure connecting it to the screen, but other than that, I think these are ready to go.
Of course, if you know me, you know that I like to try my hand at painting my prints and making them look nice, and I couldn’t help myself this time. I absolutely doused one of my sample cases with high-build primer (should I have rough-sanded it first? maybe!), and then went after it with some blue pearl that I had lying around and a can of clear.
I think it looks nice sitting on the printer.
I think there’s still inventory. If you want one of these SLS cases of your own, you can still go order one!
Flyers Are Out To Press!
Did you know that by EU rules, all products must come with Instructions for Safe Use, in English and German? Well, some Instructions for Safe Use are coming soon.
In Which I Get Impulsive!
There are a bunch of plastic baggies involved. I couldn’t help myself, and I bought one of those cool impulse sealer things to make sealed plastic baggies of screws and cases and antistatic bags. I hope it works.
Box Production Samples Are Here!
I’m still keeping this a secret, but O. M. G., this looks good. Just know that Annie did an absolutely amazing job on this.
Anyway, it feels like we’re in the home stretch. Getting to build cool stuff like this for people to enjoy is a lovely light in otherwise dark seeming times. I can’t wait to start getting these out to you.
Talk soon,
joshua
