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2010-08-15 11:13:05 (5568 views)  The body band eyelet gals were confronted with the extremely poor quality of their product. They saw all the eyelets had come off and promised to try again and do it right. Apparently, since the body band is stretchable, it is not easy to add eyelets (has there ever been a part of our product that was easy to make?)
The trick seems to involve stitching some patches of non stretchable textile onto the body band where the eyelets should go. This way those portions won't stretch and the eyelets won't come off. Or something. Not too interested how they do it, really, as long as those things stop coming off.
As for the other company (supposed to print the thunder logo), unfortunately we were overconfident about being able to navigate this huge market. After two hours walking around and finding miscellaneous interesting objects, buttons and bands it became obvious we no longer know where they're located. No worries, we've got a business card (and probably should have brought that along) and will call them and see why they haven't sent anything and why they aren't returning calls.
Some misc pictures follow:
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2010-08-14 08:19:29 (5570 views) The difference is obvious. What we were given by our current supplier is pretty much a sticker, not an overlay.
Overlays are a lot more rigid, and there is a clearly discernible transparent layer of material above the printed surface which gives the overlay that distinct "hardware look".
We figured out and tested the material and thickness from their labeled samples on our real plastic parts, and we're waiting for this manufacturer to update an old quote given to us many months ago and get back to us on whether they can play with us until we get some volume or not.
Their overlays are used for bank hardware and point of sale displays and keypads. The polycarbonate layer is nice and thick. The result is very professional. It is likely that their screen printing resolution is also higher.
Monday, another guy will drive here to meet us and he will go through our requirements. If we can convince one or the other we're back on track with the overlays and this time these guys are local. If the color's off by one percent we'll knock at their door and choose pantone buckets ourselves :)
Tomorrow we should be able to visit the Zhongda market again, and visit the thunder printing guys who didn't print the thunder, and the eyelet gals who make the eyelets that fall off in 1 minute. We'll take pictures of this enormous textile and clothing part market. Forget the terracotta warriors - this market is one of the things to see in China!
Incredible lawlessness on the streets. Cars, pedestrians, bikes, bicycles, man-cart hybrids crossing in all directions oblivious to traffic lights - and all honking, beeping and shouting like a giant orchestra.
A variety of objects including heavy rolls of textile poorly loaded on cheap bicycle carts sometimes dropped on pedestrians. It's the Chinese Far West, and we are in town with a mission: the Body Band!
2010-08-14 03:17:22 (5555 views) Device crashed after wireless reprogramming through a USB hub. Bug tracked down to latency issues and fixed. Meeting with new overlay guy in half an hour.
2010-08-14 01:46:59 (5502 views) Not on the product of course, but on trying NOT to publish any pictures of the less than perfect overlays we've received. We've chosen a few shots where the defects aren't so evident (except the colors which are way off) and here they are.
1. DL2K-LINK is *almost* perfect except for one dimension (not visible in the picture, but important when placing the overlay) and the button hole size and position.
2. The remote is the main problem. Although it looks good here, the overlay isn't flat so when you look at it very closely it's sort of cheap looking. We're meeting with another supplier in 1 hour (he drove all the way from another city to meet us on a Saturday!) ... you may also notice one of the buttons has paint coming off that's because you're not supposed to paint rubber like this anyway, it was just a test; we'll get the *real* black rubber keypads next week. Lastly, the clear plastic with no color dyes is by far the best looking...
3. As you can see all text is printed in "mirror" color (if that's even a color). The text has been made too bold by an unauthorized modification to our design
4. It's hard to take digital pictures in the darkness; here you can *more or less* see the effect of light being transported around the edges of the enclosure by the polycarbonate plastic. Looks much better to the naked eye.
As we explained yesterday, the big problems are how the overlays have been cut which results in excess glue, and the thickness. We are now trying to find a new supplier so that the final result can look as good or even better than what you see here. Thickness of the polycarbonate layer on the overlays is very important because it gives the overlay thickness (so the impression is to look through a thin layer of glass), and it also confers rigidity which is essential trying to position these properly. An error in positioning results in bumps and imperfections on the surface of the overlay.
Final note: the DL2K-LINK is shown in pink here but eventually the color of all plastic parts will have to be identical as all parts are created from the same mold.
You'll probably think we're being too picky if you just see these pictures... please have faith, when we get the good overlays we will post comparisons so you can see the current defects in all their horrible deformity :)
To be fair though let's take a look at what about 2 years ago was our state of the art remote control. Yabba dabba yucky!!!
2010-08-13 12:40:05 (5220 views) So many things going on that it's hard to stay on top of everything:
- Screws with new screw heads being custom-made (will fit into the brass inserts)
- Phosphorescent silicone parts being created (the pigments look amazing, purple needs sunlight or UV to charge but it's out of this world groovy)
- New rubber stars being created... we'll explain when we get them.
- Band received and it was bad, eyelets came off right away, we'll go back to Zhongda market and bring a camera and show you this amazing place (and show them they screwed up and beg them to do it right next time)
- Mold changes done, waiting for new parts to come out to commit to polishing and texturing
- Too busy to get to the software part, still need to fix some firmware stuff (wireless reprogramming reliability, reintroducing all features like dog mode, virtual leash mode etc)
- Box: we are getting samples! Not good enough for pictures yet, actually the standard for boxes is pretty low in China, but we're teaching them... we may have something cool soon to show you
- Waiting to receive papers so we can use our brand new corporate bank account
- EMC testing on Tuesday (maybe)
- Battery guy trying to flake on our order quantity, he's being contained for the time being
Rough ride, but we're almost there...
2010-08-13 12:01:21 (3341 views) But... but... there are no pictures. Why? Read on...
First of all: we should tell you that having applied these overlays to the remotes, we finally "more or less" know what the final look of this device will be like, and it's amazing. Surprisingly, the clear remotes (no dyes, no paint) ended up looking the best. The LEDs makes the whole enclosure shine when it's dark - a much better than expected result.
Looking at these parts from a distance, we can really see our dream becoming a reality! We have both the remote control overlay and the DL2K-LINK overlay.
HOWEVER. There were several problems with these overlays - problems that are only evident if you look at them closely. If we posted pictures here you would probably not see anything wrong, unless we posted close-ups which look a lot worse than the situation really is. So we'll wait to post until we've rectified the situation.
But to give it to you straight:
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