Shorter update --- Most Mold quotes are in!
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Mar 10, 2023 at 09:55:16 AM
MARCH Update:
Hello,
We have some injection molded plastic quote updates, a circuit board update, and some financing news to discuss here. Lets get right into it!
Injection Molded Plastics:
A majority of the quotes from over 10 manufacturing companies have come in and we are looking to pick the manufacturer who will be making our parts in the week of March 20th. To lock them in, we will be putting a deposit down on the molds. The quotes for the steel molds for making the plastics for the left- and right- hand devices range anywhere from $56,200 to $124,000 (in case anyone was curious about how much these things cost!). Luckily one of the more reasonable quotes is from a company that the mechanical expert on my team has worked with on multiple occasions.
After we pick our manufacturer and get the down payment to them, we expect to see our first sample parts approximately 8 weeks from March 20th (which puts us into mid-May). We will fully evaluate these units and expect that there will likely be some minor quality changes and adjustments that need to be made. Those changes should take another ~6-7 weeks to turn around. We are hopeful that, after one set of changes, we will be ready to start the smaller 100 piece manufacturing build followed by a larger build that will fulfill the Kickstarter units.
These injection molds are the highest risk to the timeline of this project currently but, we're still very much on track to deliver on or before October.
Circuit Board Update:
As mentioned, in the previous update, we had to correct some small errors made on our last board spin. After an evaluation period, we have extracted a reasonable amount of useful information out of the current circuit boards. We are now initiating our second circuit board spin using this microcontroller. We anticipate this will be our final spin for our right-hand devices. Once the circuit boards for the right-hand are complete, we will quickly follow up with our left-hand circuit board.
Financing:
We have found our lender (we hope). We initially had reached out to several financial institutes around the states, including some that turned out to be nasty predatory ones. It turned out we should have started with our local bank. We have had a great relationship with them in the past and, due to this, they are excited to work with us. We are currently in underwriting for a SBA loan through our local bank which is a big step in the right direction!
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FEBRUARY UPDATE (Public)
*We only did a private update in February. Below is the public portion:
Hello,
Here is our February update showing the progress of various parts of our design:
Circuit Boards:
As mentioned in our last update, we ordered circuit boards and they are in now. They are working great and our firmware engineer is hard at work programming these to work exactly like we want them to. Our firmware engineer is also working on the integration between the desktop software application and the mouse firmware.
The buttons you see in this picture below are Omron switches. While we love Omron, we had an opportunity to put in the Kailh 8.0 switches into this mouse (pointer and middle finger). This is a switch that is mechanically rated to 80 million mechanical clicks. It's one of the best switches out there currently. These switches are on order and will be in within the next few weeks along with many of the other switches in our design (and the encoder wheel).
Mechanicals:
We have a nice, robust mechanical design. Everything is functioning very well. We have been focusing on 3 main items lately.
- We are working on the base unit that springs the device back to center. It is going very well and it feels amazing right now; it has just the right tension, it's very thin profile, and it has tight tolerances.
- We have been working on getting the thumb buttons tuned in with the right feel, conures, and lighting.
- Lastly, we've sent out about several quotes for getting steel injections molds built along with quotes to building the just over 1900 units that you all have so graciously pre-ordered.
Software:
We had mentioned to some that we desired to do a web-based software but, we were struggling to get this done cleanly. There were some hurdles that were making the solution we were working on very clunky and non-user friendly. We decided to go back to a desktop software solution that supports Windows, Linux, and Mac.
With this desktop solution, we strive to make it so users won't have to run a background software with our mouse after re-mapping the buttons. This is has always been our goal but it's worth stating. We purposefully added a non-volatile memory chip to the mouse so several profiles could be loaded into the mouse. After a profile is loaded to a mouse, it becomes plug-and-play with any computer and all of your macros and bindings are fully functional. ---WE HATE BLOATWARE! :)
Here is what the UI looks like so far. It's ever evolving so there is a good chance it will not look exactly like this in its final form.
The Current and Future Builds in General:
We built up 12 circuit boards with their associated plastics (as seen in the Circuit Board Section). The boards had a couple of very small problems but that's why we did such a small build. These small issues are to be expected! With minimal modifications, the boards are functioning like we want them to.
Future Builds: Once we hash out any bugs, make adjustments, and get our first samples of injection molds in, we will be doing a 100 piece pre-manufacturing beta test build. When we start that build (it could be a 2-3 months away depending on how long the molds take), we want to send most of those units out for people to test. When we do that build and we're ready for feedback we'll ask for volunteers and we'll pick who gets those units by need than by backer number. While those are 100 units are being tested, the main fulfillment manufacturing build will start.
Future, Distant Plans for Hedgehog Gaming:
While we are fully focused on fulfilling this current mouse, our minds wonder sometimes. Some future projects we have thrown out there are:
- A smaller version of this mouse with many of its features that are targeted towards a wider audience.
- We want to, some day, develop custom 3d printed mouse shells that go over our mouse base + circuit boards. While Hedgehog Gaming isn't a non-profit business, we want to work with non-profits like the DAV (Disabled American Veterans) and AbleGamers to help some of our friends and fellow gamers out!
