Hi Backers,

Time to give you another inside look at what's happening in our NanoLeaf world! So let's get started:

Product Labeling and LEAF design

After preparing our circuit boards, they were sent to be engraved with various product specifications. In a small section of the light bulb, we have labeled the lumens, power consumption, and voltage. This way, each light bulb has its specific characteristics clearly marked so they cannot be mixed up. With the two regional voltages (North America 100-140V / Europe & Asia 200-270V), three different brightness levels, and three different colors/designs, it made for a total of 18 different variations of the light bulb. (that's a lot of information to keep track of!) It demonstrated once again how important it is to have organizational skills! Whew. The good news is, everything came out looking great! :)

Surface Mount Technology (SMT)

After the engraving comes a process called SMT(Surface Mount Technology) in which all of the electronic components are placed onto the circuit board and soldered into place.

The SMT that we're doing has three basic steps:

• Step 1. a "solder paste" is first put onto the locations where the components will be placed.
• Step 2. a robot places all the components in the appropriate locations.
• Step 3. Finally, the circuit board goes through a "reflow oven" that heats up the board to the point where the "solder" (made of tin, copper, and silver) melts and permanently fixes the components electrically to the circuit connections on the board.

In order to melt lead-free solder, the circuit board must get heated up to about 260 degrees Celsius which is much higher than the heat requirements for solder that has lead. This is where we ran into some slight problems.

We started with an initial test batch of white bulbs, but the heat burnt the paint turning our white color into a beige color. :( The white paint used for our circuit boards was not designed for this high temperature and the supplier did not tell us this in advance. The normal process using lead-based solder is done at a lower temperature, but we did not accept to use lead due to its toxic nature in the environment. We tried varying the temperature, all to no avail.

We decided to not continue with the beige boards, although to some the colour is still passable as white. We promised white light bulbs to the backers and that is what we will deliver.

Fortunately, the supplier was very helpful to make new circuit boards for us with better paint. However, we still lost two weeks of time. Our new schedule is to ship the first set of NanoLeaf light bulbs in early June. We are terribly sorry about this delay but we will do our best to meet this new schedule.

Back on Track

Since then, we worked with the circuit board supplier to change the paint that was being used to a special high quality white paint that is able to withstand higher temperatures and the problem was solved! A new batch has been made and we are now back on track. We may decide to start offering beige bulbs just to clear up some extra inventory. ;) By the way, no problems at all with the black circuit boards!

The second time around, the surface mount technology process went smooth and we made over 1000 pieces. The whole process is rather interesting, not only because we are making NanoLeaf bulbs, but because this is the same process that has been used for decades to make the vast majority of high tech electronics that we all use every day. We took a quick video to show you the SMT robot placing the components onto the circuit board (see below).

We're at our final step in the manufacturing process now and the new NanoLeaf bulbs are about to come to life - hopefully in the next two weeks.

Packaging

We have almost completed the design of our eco-friendly packaging and the boxes will be sent for printing and die cutting imminently. To facilitate easy recognition of what's in the box, we decided to use 3 different colours on the packaging to differentiate the 3 levels of brightness (from least brightest to brightest, the colors are blue, green, and yellow). There will be a window cut in the box so that you can see part of the light bulb inside and from that can tell weather the bulb is black, white, or has the a leaf pattern engraved. Finally, to distinguish the voltage version of the bulb, there will be check boxes on the package with a check mark placed beside the appropriate voltage of the bulb inside. When your light bulb arrives, please double check that you have received the correct voltage and design as per your order. Although plugging a 220V version into a 120V socket won't hurt the bulb, the brightness will not be full. On the other hand, plugging a 120V version into 220V socket will probably quickly end the life of the bulb (we have tried this). Please, notify us of any problems and we will assist.

That's all for now, look out for an update in the next few weeks once our completed NanoLeaf bulbs are ready to be shipped!

The NanoLeaf Team

Check out our video update for a few quick announcements and an inside look at the NanoLeaf LED manufacturing process. 

Dear Awesome Backers,

We sincerely appreciate and are grateful for all of your generosity and kind support throughout this project. We ended with 13x our initial goal, and it's you guys that made this amazing feat possible! As a result of this fantastic turnout, we now have enough funding to choose high quality component suppliers, and ensure that the NanoLights you receive are the best quality that we know how to make. We are working on this project seven days a week and we have a few hired hands helping.

The NanoLight is getting Greener!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! In the spirit of this "green" holiday, we are pleased to formally announce that we are re-branding the NanoLight to a greener brand name - the NanoLeaf.

As you may have known from reading our bios page, we are a team made up of passionate tree-huggers. In these past few weeks, we have discussed and finally decided that it is in our company's best interest to make our brand and logo represent the mission of our company, which is ultimately to make the world a greener place through creating energy efficient products. The new identity had to satisfy all of the existing expectations of what our company stands for, while simultaneously moving the brand forward.

Our primary goal is to create a unique and recognizable mark that strongly represents our company's mission and values.

With that said, we believe that our new NanoLeaf brand will more accurately represent our company's energy efficient, conservation-focused innovations and technological advancements. We will start to gradually transition our website, logo, and product materials from the NanoLight to the NanoLeaf. Please help us spread the word on our decision to rebrand, and let your friends and family know about the NanoLeaf! It's the same great product, but now with a greener name. :)

Pre-Order now available through our website!

We have added the ability to pre-order lightbulbs directly from our new website - www.theNanoLeaf.com. For those of you looking to order more NanoLeaf Bulbs, you may now place your pre-order through our webstore! The website pre-orders are scheduled to ship out immediately after we fulfill our Kickstarter orders.

For those of you that want more NanoLeaf Bulbs, pre-order from our website - www.theNanoLeaf.com!

Manufacturing Progress:

The LED order is finalized and submitted. We have broken the order into two parts. The first order is for 59900 LEDs, which is enough to make 1800 NanoLeaf light bulbs. These bulbs will ship to those backers that have an expected delivery date of April to May. The second order is for 153900 LEDs, and these will be used to make 4650 more light bulbs. These will ship out some time after May. The LEDs are the most expensive component in making our NanoLeaf bulbs, so we are thrilled to finally be able to have enough funding to get our mass production started! The main difference between the three versions of the NanoLeaf light (1200 lumen, 1600 lumen, and 1800+ lumen) is that they use different LED designs at different cost/performance tradeoff points. For those that have ordered the 1800+ lumen bulbs, and are expecting us to have held back no expense for the purchase of LEDs, we are happy say that we have designed the very best LED we could with cost taken out of the equation. The LED chip used in these top performance bulbs is a new chip that is still rarely available.

As you can imagine, we have a lot of work ahead of us and still some challenges. Now that the Kickstarter funds are being released to us, we need to do various bank transfers and issue various purchase orders. It is at the time of the purchase orders that we will start to find out about lead times for components. We are hoping that we will not run into issues with lead times, however, from talking to our suppliers and their purchasers, it appears that sometimes this can become an issue in the manufacturing business when dealing with large quantities. It is new to us and we are still learning. We have no need to announce any delay at this time and will continue to work hard to push the project forward. We will be posting videos clips and pictures on our progress through our Kickstarter Updates, Twitter, and Facebook, to keep you informed on the status of your NanoLeaf.

Backer Surveys:

We will be sending out the surveys for the first batch of bulbs soon to gather your shipping information, color preferences (Black, White, White with Leaf Design) and your regional voltage requirements (120V AC, 220-240V AC). As well as to confirm your order details. Please make sure you return the survey to us in a timely manner so that we can get those NanoLeaf orders finalized!

Please stay tuned for the weeks to come, we will be sending out frequent updates and sharing the manufacturing process with all of you!

The NanoLeaf Team

Hi All,

We can't believe we only have one week left to go! It has been an incredible ride and has far exceeded our expectations. We're well beyond 1000% of our initial goal with still some days to go. We are learning and growing so much from this experience. Needless to say, we have realized that there is a great demand for this type of product in the world. People are thinking green and we absolutely love to see it! The money that we have raised on Kickstarter is going to be used for even better things. Please keep watching us because we are dreaming big. However, first and foremost, our top priority is to deliver the first batch of NanoLights to the backers on time.

Update on Manufacturing Progress:

We are progressing very well with the manufacturing setup and are happy to still report that we anticipate on time shipments. For the past few weeks, we have been diligently overseeing the LED packaging process and performing extensive tests on the sample order of LEDs that we have received. The LED that we're using in our bulbs is the most critical part of the NanoLight, so we are taking extra care in ensuring a high quality product. Our standards are very high. As well, we are working with the assembly factory in defining every aspect and detail of the manufacturing process. This factory is run by a German guy and we expect nothing less than German perfection. The bill of materials, which includes sources of all parts, is getting close to final. We have conducted our first meeting with the staff of the assembly line to start to train them on the assembly steps. The testing and quality assurance procedure is very much defined now. Each NanoLight will go through a few stages of testing which ensure that the power consumption and light output are within tolerances among other things. About 5 hours of testing and burn-in will be performed for each NanoLight. Although in some ways it is sad to see the Kickstarter campaign coming to an end, at the same time we are truly excited to be entering the next phase. The funding will be released to us sometime in the second half of March. At that time we will pull the trigger on the large scale manufacturing. In the mean time, we will continue optimizing the process and making samples on a small scale to ensure an efficient manufacturing setup.

Dimmable Feature Update: 

The dimmable version of the NanoLight is currently still a work in progress. We have worked out several of the technical details and have a prototype that is already functional and dimmable. We are now a lot more confident that a dimmable version of the light bulb will see the light of day in the near future. That said, we are holding off on the official announcement because we once again want to bring exciting innovative features to the world. Like we are reinventing the light bulb, we also want to reinvent the dimmable light bulb. Since our Kickstarter project is drawing to an end in a week, we are not going to launch this new dimmable light bulb during this campaign. We feel that the dimmable light bulb deserves it's own launch. Please wait for it… we promise you will not be disappointed.

Mysterious LEDs

We have received a lot of questions about what kind of LEDs we are using. So far we have not revealed very much at all. To say a bit more, the LEDs are in many ways our own design and are not something you can buy off the shelf. Many of the parameters that define the LED are under our full control. We are working with a few vendors that supply parts to make the LEDs and ultimately the LED is assembled into a working light source. Of all things, the greatest effort has been expended in designing the LEDs. We haven't stopped. We have gone through several iterations of making samples and testing using a range of parameters. We have evaluated several tradeoffs that are inherent in LED design and we are very proud of what we will be able to deliver to you.

Color Temperature is now Warmer!

Originally we announced that the NanoLight will produce a "bright neutral white with a bit of warmth". More specifically, we chose a 4000k color temperature that puts the white color at about what you get outdoors in the evening sun. This is a very pleasant white colour that is versatile in your home. However, we admit that a 4000k color temperature is not ideal in the bedroom. In the bedroom, people have become accustomed to even warmer light for extra comfort. What we want least is for our backers to receive their NanoLights, install them in their bedroom and then realize that the light color is not quite what they expected. For this reason, we have decided to lower the color temperature to 3500k. The light output will be more appropriate for the bedroom and will still be perfectly usable throughout the home. We want as many of our backers as possible to love their new NanoLights. From a technical point of view, we have managed to do this without sacrificing efficiency and there will be no extra cost to our backers. For the Kickstarter project, we need to limit the complexity of production to only one color temperature but in the future we will offer more color temperature choices.

A New Reward - The World's Most Efficient Light Bulb!

When we announced the NanoLight to the world on Kickstarter, we called it the world's most energy efficient light bulb. As far as we knew, this light bulb was more efficient than anything we have seen anywhere on the market, by a good margin too. However, we thought for sure someone would at least attempt to challenge that claim and point out something that is more efficient, something in existence that we have overlooked. Well, it has been almost 2 months and the NanoLight has made news stories around the globe, but no one has challenged it's efficiency yet. It looks like the NanoLight really is the most energy efficient light bulb out there. But… speaking very literally, there can only be one single light bulb that can be crowned for being the world's most energy efficient. And… we will offer that light bulb now as an extra reward. In this last week in our Kickstarter campaign one person can take that bulb. We guarantee that from all the light bulbs we produce, this bulb will be the best single NanoLight. It will come with a testing report and a certificate of thanks that will describe some of the things that the generous contribution will allow us to do. The backer can also request a particular design or imprinting of text onto the shell of the light.

Photo Contest

Let's have some fun! …and at the same time help with an important purpose. We want to get as many NanoLights out there as possible so that the world can start saving electricity and lowering greenhouse emissions. For this reason, we would love to see as many uses for the NanoLight as possible. At this stage of the game, we badly want to learn how our product is being used so that we can inspire more people to use it that way or it may point the way to future product innovations. Once you receive your NanoLight, please please take a photo of it in action. We want to see your photos. The world wants to see your photos. We are going to hold a contest (details to be announced) and in return we will be sending out a bunch of free NanoLights to some of the best entries. As entries, we will also accept hand or computer drawn artwork that depicts the NanoLight. Help us come up with some great uses for the NanoLight. We will learn from each other to make the world more green.

One week to go! please continue to share our project with your friends and family.

Best Regards,

The NanoLight Team

Hi All,

Thank you all for your comments regarding the Leaf design update. It was very informative and helpful to receive your feedback. From the comments we read, there seems to be an apparent split in opinions (the majority loved it, a portion did not, and the rest seemed to like the concept of having a design - just not this particular design).

After careful review and consideration, we have decided that the best option would be to make the Leaf design an optional add-on. We are excited to announce that for only $5 more, people can opt to get the bulb with the Leaf design for both the $30 and $45 reward options!

As for our $100/$300/$1000 reward backers, we would like to offer you the free option of upgrading to the Leaf design as a token of our appreciation for your generous support. 

If you have already pledged for a bulb and are interested in upgrading your pledge, we have released three new reward options. Please log onto our KickStarter page and update your pledge to one of the following: 

• $35 - With LEAF Design - One White 10W NanoLight (75W-Equivalent)
• $50 - With LEAF Design - One White 12W NanoLight (100W-Equivalent).
• $100 - With LEAF Design - One White 12W NanoLight (1800 Lumens).

The expected delivery date is listed as September. However, we will be shipping them out to you as soon as they come out of production, which may be as early as May.

Thank you!

The NanoLight Team

Follow us on Twitter: @theNanoLight