Kickstarter

We're well settled into our space at Artisan's Asylum. Lately we've been perfecting the workflow for the packaging process: cutting parts from reels, organizing them into smaller containers, heat-sealing parts into plastic bags.

This is what parts for 1000 Tesla coils look like!

We're all ready to go... except the toroids still aren't here. We've been in constant contact with the manufacturer of the toroids, and the simple fact of the matter is that it takes a long time to machine hardened steel dies. Due to problems with his initial design, our manufacturer has revised his process and made new dies. He's now using a two-part die which is slightly larger and pre-forms the outside of the toroids with a secondary die. The inside of the toroid comes out smooth, but the outside has some wrinkles. Some of you have been making suggestions in the comments on how to fix the problems with the toroids-- we've forwarded these on to the manufacturer and he says the comments have been helpful.

Here's all 350lbs of his initial die: 

The initial toroids came out awfully wrinkly: 

The manufacturer anticipates that it will be another few weeks before he gets good results. Hopefully that will be the end to his problems. In the meantime, we will start shipping kits as fast as we can package them, starting this week, and we'll send toroids along as they arrive. Let us know if you would NOT like your kit to be shipped without the toroid. We don't recommend running with any topload other than our toroids, so you should wait until the toroids arrive before running your coil anyway. 

 Several weeks ago, we finished shipping all the circuit boards. If you have not yet received your circuit boards, let us know. As soon as we get some kits out the door, we'll open up the "complete your kit" option on the website. There isn't much of a point in taking these orders while we still have hundreds more that haven't yet been shipped.

In other news, we were invited to a Tesla Tech fair at Dartmouth College (which you can read more about on our blog), and we found that Pelican cases with pick-n'-pluck foam inserts make a fantastic carrying case for oneTesla. 

As always, feel free to ask questions on our forum, or send us a message on Kickstarter. Happy coiling!

Dear Backers,

The circuit boards have arrived, and we wanted to share our excitement with you right away. Here are some pictures of what will be coming to you soon.

We’re collecting addresses and information using Google forms rather than Kickstarter surveys because it’s easier to customize the survey and keep track of responses using Google. Sorry if that’s caused any confusion!

On a lighter note, we celebrated the start of our spring break by putting some power into Powerade. 

Notice how the streamers follow the surface of the object they're striking, even slipping under the ring at the base of the bottle cap. This interesting phenomenon is known as surface tracking. 

Dear Backers,

Well, we've been up to a whole lot of component sourcing madness, and also a whole lot of waiting for our orders to arrive. The oneTesla kits include ~100 various parts which are coming from several dozen various suppliers. Sourcing each component has involved hours of searching, comparison, and haggling. Many components have not been in stock in the quantities we need, which has meant either finding replacements or arranging shipment in several batches. 

 In the past few weeks dozens of packages have streamed in, angering the desk workers in our dorm and making us feel like kids on Christmas morning every day as we rip open the boxes. Here's 2000 meters of fiber cable-- most of the world's currently available stock!

It has been difficult to estimate when everything would arrive because we didn’t know which of dozens of pending orders would have issues. Now that nearly everything has arrived and we've moved it from Heidi’s dorm room into our space at Artisan’s Asylum, we have a much better sense of what’s left to do. We forgot a camera the last time we were there, so this smartphone photo of Bayley with all of the boxes in our space will have to do: 

Here’s the breakdown of the parts that we’re still missing: 

Aluminum toroids and secondary coils are delayed due to suppliers. These were among the first things we ordered, and the fact that we’re still waiting for them is quite beyond our control. I guess the lead time we requested for these custom parts is quite short on an industrial timescale, and relative to other huge parts orders ours is relatively small, so we might have gotten pushed around. 

Circuit boards, acrylic chassis, and manuals are delayed due to late ordering. We ordered an extra round of prototype circuit boards to be absolutely sure there would be no issues when we made the expensive bulk order. We had trouble finding a good price and reliable supplier on the acrylic chassis; initial quotes even from before the Kickstarter campaign ranged between $2.50 and $150 each. After a few weeks of back and forth, the cheap quote mysteriously jumped in price to $42 each, and we weren’t able to determine why since the Chinese supplier barely spoke English. We’ve finally found a reliable American supplier and chassis are on their way in another two weeks or so. A handful of parts have changed slightly since we last took detailed pictures, so we'll do final photography for the manual as soon as the missing parts arrive. 

in other news, here are some fantastic new pictures of a modified oneTesla by our friend GGY (see his other photography on flickr and his other projects at http://loneoceans.com/labs/). 

 And what else have we been killing time with at MITERS? High-speed jello photography! Enjoy.

Dear Backers, 

Check out the new interrupter design, now with standalone mode! 

We ordered expedited shipments of the latest revision of the main board to test it before placing a bulk order. Don't worry-- yours will be black. The manufacturer doesn't offer black silkscreen for small quantities.

And here's the very first bulk shipment we've received: 800 batteries for the interrupter-- on the floor of Heidi's dorm room at the moment. 

We're moving into Artisan's Asylum, a nearby hackerspace that has space for rent. We'll actually be located right next to where Stompy, a rideable hexapod also funded by Kickstarter, is being assembled. We're excited to have a real space of our own!

Nearly everything else has already been ordered and is on the way. We've run into a small setback with our primary capacitors: they have been globally sold out for the past week. We've contacted the manufacturer, however, and a bulk shipment of capacitors is scheduled to be shipped to us direct from the factory at the beginning of March. So, our February kits will unfortunately be delayed by a few weeks. In the meantime, join the forum and stay tuned for further updates.

Lastly-- one more silly thing we've been up to at MITERS:

As many of you have requested, here's the parts list for the driver, and here's the parts list for the interrupter. Add 2x MUR640 diodes for the 220V version. 

For our backers who have purchased bare boards, if you don't want to supply your own parts, we've decided to have a "complete your kit" option available through our website soon. It will include everything that's in the main kit except for the boards. The "complete your kit" package will be shipped by March. 

Have you checked the manual lately? It's been updated with, among other things, nice waveforms of various points along the signal path, as requested several times. All kits will come with a printed & bound manual. 

Keep refreshing the Kickstarter page! The most shuffling will take place in the last few hours, while our backers have the last chance both to pledge and to cancel. If you want to snag a kit last-minute, now's going to be the chance.