Visibility: Poor
Current: Strong
Looks like we’ve ventured into some cloudy water. We are experiencing a moderate delay in moving Nemo into production. At this point in time, deliveries will be pushed back by about 6 weeks. It is most likely that the first units will not be delivered until late January or early February, pending no other major setbacks. We’re swimming against the current right now, but we know better conditions are to come.
Report:
Though the waters may be cloudy, we’ll remain completely transparent with our backers, here’s what’s happening: The initial plan was to fulfill all Kickstarter orders using a novel production-quality 3D printer to build the rigid parts of Nemo.
However, the program that we were relying on to make use of that printer has become unavailable to us on a very unexpected and short notice. It is no longer feasible to build systems with the 3D printer. Meaning, we must now prepare all of the parts for plastic injection molding and bear the long lead times involved with creating molds.
Though 6 weeks is not terribly long, we consider this a major setback and our team, especially our engineering team, is likely the most disappointed by the circumstance. Rest assured that our engineers are working extremely hard in order to to mitigate the delay, but there are significant design changes involved in transitioning from 3D printing to injection molding. As always, we’ll keep you updated.
Forecast:
On a positive note, we received and assembled our CNC router machine this week. The CNC router will be used to cut out Nemo’s XLPE buoyancy foam. While our main focus remains on preparing the parts for injection molding, we plan on getting the CNC up and running when there is any spare time. We also received our motor coil winding machine and are very excited to start setting up the process for winding our electromagnet coils!
