Chube Compact Update:
Since our last Compact-related blogpost, we have made a lot of excellent progress with machining in general! Luke learned a lot of necessary skills, and worked through the most difficult Pika parts and materials.
I know all of you are interested in a timeline, and I really wish I could provide an accurate one. I am reluctant to give hard dates, because outside factors are difficult to predict.
What I can tell you, is that things are moving much faster now, and we are committed to shipping out all of your units, while making sure Chube Compact is a high quality hotend!
If you are interested in more about machining, watch Luke's recent YouTube videos here:
Manufacturing Update - February Maintenance
There is also a short on nozzle manufacturing here!
Machining
Machining the Pika parts taught Luke a lot of skills that are necessary for Compact. The type of copper we use was the biggest bottleneck, and we now know the best tooling and programming methods, which are applicable to the Compact heatblock!
For example, Luke was able to take the recipe for deep hole drilling directly from Pika, adjust the total depth, apply it to Conduction Meltzone Adapters, and continue on his merry way! He went from taking 3 weeks of machine testing with the Pika heatblocks, to just a few days with the meltzone adapters. This learning is allowing machining to move forward much more quickly than before.
Manufacturing and Assembly
Our new staff member is already proving to be a tremendous help, and we are incredibly happy to have him here! He has been setting up systems for quality control, and is helping us figure out a better and faster way to tighten heatbreaks.
In the past, I tightened all heatbreaks by hand, with the torque wrench below. This was time-consuming, and also exhausting for my hands. A new system will significantly speed up our assembly times for both Pika and Compact!
Heaters and PT1000s:
They are here!!!! This was a really large order, I have never seen so many heaters and PT1000s in one place before.
FIN6 Nozzles:
Reminder that we will be including these as a thank-you to our direct buyers.
We have made these nozzles in the sizes .4, .5, and .6 in copper! In the future, we hope to make other sizes as well.
They will be plated at the same time as the Pika heatblocks and FIN nozzles, and we will be offering them for sale.
We think these will be incredibly popular, we have been very pleased with their performance, and this is pre-plating!
Packaging:
Chube Air and Conduction:
V6 Meltzone Adapters for Conduction are made.
We won’t be able to ship full units right after those are plated, as we are also in need of heatblocks for both Air and Conduction hotends. We will be machining those after machining the heatblocks for Chube Compact.
Because Luke was just machining nozzles, and they use the same type of bar, this saves on lengthy set-up times to run these next.
Heatblocks: We will make these as soon as it makes sense in the manufacturing schedule. Currently we are running parts in whatever order saves the most setup time.
Chube Assembly Tutorials:
I have been working hard on creating instructions for Chube assembly, as well as other helpful documentation. There are now assembly instructions for Chube Air, Chube Conduction, and Chube Compact. I have also made documents instructing you on how to remove and install heaters and PT1000s for each hotend.
We will share the Compact assembly instructions as soon as we ship, there are some special aspects of the hotend we would like to keep private until they are in your hands.
Other helpful wiki documents will soon follow, including Chube Tips and Tricks, as well as extruder recommendations for each Chube hotend!
Check them out here:
Chube Air Heater and PT1000 Assembly
Chube Conduction Heater and PT1000 Assembly
How to Remove Heater and PT1000 from Chube Air
New Two Step Filament Colors:
Our last update on filament, was that the lines are back up after Chinese New Year, and hopefully we will receive it near the end of April.
