Longest day ever. Left at 10:30am, back at 9:30pm. But a very interesting and productive day. With this out of the way we can now begin true production and assembly of circuit boards.
- Submitting final CAD model for the final spray painted prototype.
- Sending final PCB design (these have to be redone thanks to the assembly house who swore they didn't need panels and now it seems they do - but we're using their amazing machines so it's all worth it)
- Before sending final PCB design we negotiated a costly but very important 1 hour trip to the EMC testing lab to make sure there won't be problems getting our EMC compliance paperwork after the boards are produced and assembled.
- Meeting with Jason and the Paint guy. Yes, there's a new "guy" around and he will come see us with samples and painted objects for us to choose. Isn't that exciting? He's probably mad as a hatter just the LED guy with all the heavy metals he inhales daily :). He will be the guy to guarantee the composition of the paint and its safety. The problem is that we can't test the back-painting method because that requires a polycarbonate enclosure with mirror finish, and the mirror finish cannot be achieved by machines but only with a mold (which we don't have yet, it's the very last step, probably to begin just as soon as we test the new plastic parts).
That's all for now - but an important waterproofing video is coming up
Trying to avoid China rants because the feeling is that once they begin they will take over the blog permanently! However a bunch of people have written and commented that they enjoy seeing the reality of manufacturing in China... so, well they convinced us to release some of the pressure that's been building up!
Disclaimer: there are a lot of positive aspects to Chinese culture, but these are usually only evident if you interact with locals on a personal level and if you speak the language.
So the rant is focused on how hard it is to "get stuff done", and how hard it is to live without all the comforts. This is from the perspective of someone looking to come to China to set up production, and is only one facet of what you can find in China...
Things are hectic - busy, busy, busy! At least 3 megaupdates should have been posted so far but we've been busy at factories and haven't had time.
For now, get this. We've convinced a state of the art PCB house - with ties to major Japanese companies - to accept a very small initial quantity to enable us to bootstrap!!
This required weeks of negotiations and begging, and was in retrospect only possible because Mr Wen and his workers are not from the Canton province. They understand standard Mandarin Chinese perfectly, so our communication with them was quite smooth.
Very busy working on a number of fronts, but stay tuned for an important progress announcement coming up within 24-48 hours.
Also today a CAD file will be sent for the final prototypes before making the plastic molds. Since they offer spray painting services, this is a good time to think seriously about the color and look of the device. Silver, sci-fi look? Or black? Mirror or matte finish? Possibilities abound.
