Some news, in the absence of a new chapter (I'll try to do this every week, with chapters every other week):
1. We finally have everything we need to begin Vidar chassis assembly. Good news!
2. We will supposedly have Vidar first articles next week from the PCB assembly house. Homework for you: find the key word in this sentence. Hint: it starts with an "s".
3. We actually have a ton of stuff in the pipeline, including, yes, stuff we haven't talked about, but when it ships depends on many factors. However, expect a busy summer and fall.
And, a happy report from another sourcing expedition.
If you've read the last chapter, you know about the abject failure of several US manufacturers to give enough of a Schiit about a little inductor, and the subsequent quoting and ordering of the product from China. Fortunately, that's not always the case.
I thought we were heading for another case of "oh crap, contact China" a couple of weeks ago when we had been sitting for 3 weeks waiting for a quote for a new deep-drawn/machined piece from a supplier we're currently working with in the USA. The capper was that they couldn't supply samples, of any kind, not even something for us to cut to fit for testing. Since this part is a critical piece of another unmentioned/maybe-might-happen/maybe-might-not-happen product, it's kind of hard to figure out if we want to do it if we (a) don't know the price, and (b) don't have anything to test with. The alternative was to literally billet machine a prototype, but that would be costly and not representative of the final product.
Why wouldn't a current supplier want to work with us? I don't know. Probably simply because we're not a big customer, and also probably since they have a lock-up on "top of mind" for their industry.
But, in any case, it was time to see if anyone was hungrier. I did the usual dance--sending a drawing out for quote amongst this company's competitors. Competitors in the USA were thin on the ground, but I was able to identify three possible alternate suppliers. I let them know that the drawing was provisional, and that we could use a slightly different size of can if they had something close (the same thing we'd told our current supplier.)
One responded with a quote for custom tooling, which is fine, but it didn't get us any closer to having something we could use for the prototype--buying $5K in tooling and getting 10,000 pcs is not exactly the most efficient way to get the 1-2 pieces you need.
One didn't respond.
And one said, "Yep, we have something like that, we already make tons of them, we could cut it down for your app, and if you wanted a couple of unfinished samples, we could send them right out."
Holy schiit. Someone who actually read the email.
Of course, samples are not a quote, and the quote could be astronomical. But that was another matter. First, the samples. I gave them our FedEx number, and I had two samples in a few days. And they were perfect. They fit the need, they could easily be cut down for a prototype, and our problem was solved. By the way, you may soon be seeing this prototype in public--it's a significant enough departure for us that we figured it may be, like, intelligent to show it to you before we commit to some (very expensive) tooling. More on this later.
So, I told them that the samples were perfect, and please quote us on finished and unfinished pieces. (Finished means, "cut to length, with some holes in it, powder-coated, and screened," whereas Unfinished was simply cut to length.
They came back in a few days...at eminently fair pricing. We'll be working with these guys.
To the other US manufacturers: this is how you do it.