Sorry about the delay (we said 24 hours...) but the day at the factory was exhaustingly exciting and we've just managed to put together the video and process some of the pictures.
Here is the video that shows our injection mold and some of the results.
And here's the whole story!
First of all, the mold had to be warmed up - some truly artistic creations came out of this process. The engineers were eager to throw away jewels such as this one below but we stopped them and we think this is a museum piece... some archaeological artifact which will show the beginning of male management technology in the Male Management Museum of the future...
Shortly after, good parts started to come out of the mold in all their glory. The mold is still not completely polished; this means our parts will soon be even smoother and better.
You can see right away that there are circles on the inside surfaces. These are common in all plastic parts (you probably saw them inside your TV remote's battery compartment and wondered what they were...) - they are ejection pins marks. The plastic needs to come out of the mold in a repeatable way and strain must be avoided because the mold's still hot and the plastic may get deformed or break. So the mold has several holes from which metal cylinders come out to eject the part after each injection.
Inquiring out of curiosity, we were told these *could* have been avoided had we specifically asked for it but the mold would have been a heck of a lot more complex. But we don't mind these little circles; after all we're accustomed to seeing professionally produced pieces and they all have them. Check the inside of any plastic product. So... it's just one more mark that we're doing it like the big boys :)
Here's the bottom part. Beautiful!
Lots more pictures follow. You were warned!
The parts are a lot more regular and precise than our machined prototypes! The remote, for one, closes tightly; the snap fit mechanism is perfect.
As you can see below the surface is STILL not perfectly smooth; this is because polishing the mold to achieve a glass-like look is expensive and requires special tools. This must be done at another location; so it will be done as a last step. Right now we're making some mold changes (very minor). The light pipe no longer fits because we moved the capacitors which previously were inconveniently placed below the keypad's edge. This last design change happened because we had to add electrostatic protection for EMC testing. But we didn't consider these components' thickness. This is the only screw-up on our side, other minor issues have to do with ease of molding and small dimension issues that the manufacturer messed up.
For instance the arms of this star part aren't wide enough to accommodate the rubber star parts which push the ring terminals against the PCB.
Small stuff, really - the mold design works perfectly and they're fixing the issues at no extra cost - we're really thankful for their help!
As this was going on Miss Kim was knocked out by the Chinese food we had for lunch...
Though the mold still has to be polished, the parts are already very good looking.
Now, sometimes we need to resort to drawings and abstract mathematics to explain the super-difficult concepts involved in Male Management Science.
The white color was tested just because of its ability to diffuse the light from the LEDs. However... ALL the colors sent to us were wrong. This is actually a difficult point. Basically we wanted to add a tiny bit of tint to the polycarbonate. Instead while we were discussing our results in the office, the engineers brought us as many sets as they could produce, using too much color, and then said they'd finished the color samples. At first we were pretty pissed off because we had asked many times to be present in order to fine-tune the color. However after a lot of back and forth we finally understood the manufacturer's explanation why you CANNOT do this.
We'll try to explain as simply as possible. We thought that since we have completely transparent parts, and bags of pigment/dye, we would be able to change the amount of dye that goes into the injection molding machine, and obtain different degrees of color saturation and transparency. However this is not the way this process works. The polycarbonate (basic material) and colored powder need a third reactant in order to mix. The proportions of these 3 materials are fixed. So when you order a bucket of black, you can't throw only half of it in, and get gray. To get gray you need to order the SAME volume of colored powder, with less pigment, so that the proportions stay constant and the materials can mix. Therefore no damage was done by mixing all of the color we had - we will have to wait for more colors to arrive; this time we've explained we want a slight tint, not almost totally opaque black/white and very deep purple.
These colors still look very good in our opinion, particularly purple. The issue is that
- the black receiver is almost totally opaque. Can't see the PCB, can't check if water went in, the LED can be seen but it's very dim
- same story for the white receiver, but it looks worse
- purple looks very cool but the receiver's full color LED is affected too much by the tint
But at any rate... this is the "diffusion" of LED light that white gives, and the reason white was a candidate (not so important on the remote, but it was a good shot to illustrate this point).
Just for fun, here's a purple remote (but the remote will most likely be spray painted black on the outside to match the overlay and due to your feedbacks)
This translucent black is actually a bit orange if viewed against lights. definitely too dark.
A cool arrangement of colors:
Here you can see the famous brass inserts. These are overmolded and impossible to remove from the plastic - so they can withstand lots of force, and allow you to open and close the receiver an unlimited number of times. To have these we had to order custom screws. Unfortunately the screw manufacturer screwed up :) and the head isn't big enough for waterproofing so we're now trying to get good samples.
By the way all the parts come neatly packaged and wrapped, it's very nice.
Here: the raspberry DL2000!
And, lemon sherbet with no calories.
The black receiver showing the brass inserts nicely
And... after a VERY long day at the factory, and with a refreshed Miss Kim, we celebrated with some spicy Korean food! We've made *so* much progress since this project began. This kind of quality would have seemed like sci-fi just a year ago.
After seeing the quality of these parts and the brass inserts, Jason has told us it would be fair if the price could go up a bit - he showed us that the quality we got is better than some big firms who place orders with him (he showed us some big plastic parts with brass inserts, and previous projects with well funded European electronics firms).
Unlike all the other Chinese vendors trying to change our prices, we are 100% cool with a price increase from Jason because he's worked SO hard on our project without ever raising the price, even fixing the researchy arousal inducer overmolding and spending tons of hours at the rubber factory and now he needs to again change our plastic mold and so forth. What's fair is fair, he's our key man, helped out a lot, we hope the increase won't be excessive but if anyone deserves to get paid among our suppliers and manufacturers it's him!
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In the next episode...
The plastic samples are already on their way to the overlay manufacturer who will now create our overlays. Next week we should be able to go to the lab and do our EMC testing.
Now speaking of the LAB there's someone who does NOT deserve a price increase! They are now trying to play games and raise our price after we've already signed their quotation. Surely Miss Kim will eat them alive like last time and straighten them out. Possible hidden camera video coming up to give you an idea of what we have to go through to get this project completed! :-)
I am a little partial to the clear. My wife is still undecided but she likes the purple or the clear. We cant wait for it to come out. It looks really good so far.
Great progress! At last there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel.
Regarding colours: I think it's important to realise that both the remote control and the receiver will have to be the same colour as they're made from the same mould. So before choosing the final colour for the plastic it's important to remember that the remote control is going to be far more visible than the receiver and that the ladies will want to be comfortable using it in public without attracting too much attention.
DL-Labs: perhaps you could show us a few different coloured remote controls to help us give feedback?
The remote will be painted outside (black) so the color of the plastic doesn't matter. This was decided with your feedback previously and matches the overlay color that's being produced.
The plan is to choose the color of the plastic based on the receiver, assuming this won't be painted (which it might in the end, but so far everyone likes clear). Then paint remote and DL2K-LINK.
It's either real or the most expensive hoax since the moon landing :))
We're working on the price. As you can imagine it's a very sensitive issue - must figure out market size, compare notes with advisors, go through new expenses and fight to avoid price increases... then there will be light!
By spedoman at 2010-08-03 06:50:38 Reply 
