Manufacturing Headaches and MakerFaire Shenzhen

Hi Backers,

Sorry for not providing an update recently. I understand the frustrations around the delivery date but we are trying our hardest to get the boards out to you ASAP. This process has been equally frustrating to our team as well.

Project and Shipping Update

The manufacturing process, in short, has been:

PCBA
Testing
Through-Hole
Accessories

We have been plagued by manufacturing scheduling issues. The factory that was doing the PCBA (all the surface mount components) delayed us - they didn’t make the boards when they said they would. In addition to the delay, they also messed up a tray of SAMD51 processors - one of their technicians bumped the tray which meant they had to spend a very long time putting them back into the tray in the correct orientation.

SAMD51 Disaster

After the PCBA manufacturing - we had to test each board individually. This took much longer than anticipated - particularly testing ourselves. However, all the boards are now tested and have passed. We did this to ensure that all backers receive a working board with no issues.

Completed Robo HAT MM1 PCB

Our second major scheduling delay was the people who were doing the through-hole soldering delayed us by not doing the boards in a sensible amount of time. They told us they would be done in a few hours but didn’t start until a few days later. There was no reason for them to do this to us, but we cannot control things outside of our domain.

Through-hole manufacturing

We are currently waiting on the cables. They should be coming completed this week but they have also delayed us. Once we have the cables there are no other parts that we are waiting on - so they will be express posted to the US for Crowd Supply to distribute.

As a small team, this is probably one of our biggest struggles. The manufacturing process is not easy but we have fought through it and will deliver all the orders ASAP.

Thank you for your patience backers.

If you need to update your shipping address, please do so through your Crowd Supply account.

MakerFaire Shenzhen

This weekend we took part in MakerFaire Shenzhen and demoed the Robo HAT MM1 in action on Donkey Cars. There were lots of people attending. and the kids had an awesome time playing with the cars.