Dear Supporters,

As soon as we realized we would meet our funding on our Kickstarter project, we engaged our vendors to speed up the process to get the product made.  Due to the complexity of the details and parts, the vendor encouraged us to create a prototype tool to test the tooling concept before we cut the steel for the final production tooling.  (At the end of the video in update #11 you can see pictures of the prototype tooling that had just been completed on that day.)  A prototype tool is made from less expensive steel that is easier to machine and modify (if changes need to be made) than the hardened steel that will be used for production.  Creating a production tool is as much an art as it is a science.  A good tooling designer is nothing short of an artist, and we are very grateful that we have Kaspar and Stefan working on this.  Stefan and Kaspar both have years of experience engineering medical products with very high precision parts and high quality finishes and materials.

Long story short, the prototype tooling has allowed us to answer a lot of questions that might have caused us major problems in production if we had gone straight to the production tooling.  This was not the ideal scenario, but we are certain this was the right strategy for us to move forward with.  Having the main housing as a production part (although a bit rough around the edges) has also allowed us to test the assembly of the touchscreen membrane.  There are a variety of methods to assemble this part and we are working out the best solution.  So far in our first assembled pieces the touchscreen membrane has been able to withstand 5 newton meters (the limit of our scale) of pressure directly in the center of the screen without any issues.  This is like putting the weight of a 15 lb dumbbell dead center on the screen.  We have also reduced the thickness of the touchscreen membrane, which gives a near perfect interaction with the touchscreen interface.  We are really happy with this result so far, and will further test this assembly for salt water exposure, and also test the strength when exposed to temperatures from -20 °C and +45 °C, which is the non operating temperature range in the Apple iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S technical specifications.  We also noted that the min and max operational temperature for the iPhone 4/4S are 0 to 35 °C. So please be careful when using your iPhone in the Sahara desert or the Arctic!

The creation of any mass produced product is a balancing act between 4 basic factors:  tooling feasibility, production stability, functionality, and design.  This is at the core of all product development.  Simply put, we want deliver a product of exceptional quality.  Every stage that we go through from design to engineering to tooling to production requires some adjustments to find the right balance in getting them all to work.  Unfortunately, this also has an impact on the production timeline.  Our initial production schedule was very optimistic and we had to adjust it due to the complexity of our product.  So here are the basic milestones we will be working towards for producing the EscapeCapsule.

Production tooling will be complete by approximately November 30th.  At this time we will be able to produce and assemble the first "T1" production parts.  These will likely be at 90% the quality of the final production unit.  After this, It is going to take 3 to 4 weeks to fine tune the tooling.  Our second round of production parts called "T2 samples" are planned to be completed by approximately December 15th.  During this time, we will also start testing the T2 samples for functionality, waterproofing, drop tests, heat, cold, sound quality, and so on.  On January 6th, we are scheduled to have our first pilot run of 100 pieces.  These should be perfect for the most part.  We will use these units to test for our IPX8 waterproof rating.  Production is scheduled to start around the week of January 9th to 16th.  We will first produce and ship the glow-in-the-dark green EscapeCapsules as our supporters for this have paid a premium for the Kickstarter Only Edition.  We will then produce the blue and black EscapeCapsules in mass production.  As soon as they are available, we will ship the orders for the Great Escape, Share The Love and The Full Deal.  Please note, that the Chinese New Year celebrations will be between January 21st to January 30th.  This is the major annual Holiday in China that is like Christmas and New Years for us.  No factory will be running at this time. As we reach these milestones in our production schedule, we will update everyone on how the project is progressing.

Thank you all for your kind words, advice, encouragement and energy along the way.   Without you, we would not be able to get this product into production and we really appreciate your patience, understanding and support as we do everything we can to make the EscapeCapsule a reality.  We keep getting new emails, comments, tweets, requests for distribution, press coverage, product review requests and all sorts of feedback on a regular basis and we are thrilled to by all of this.  Our main focus is to deliver you an exceptional quality product so that you can all be proud that you are a part of this and that you backed our project.  You're awesome and we love you all.

Josh and June