ZNAPS - Connection is just a snap away

ZNAPS is a magnetic adapter specially designed to seamlessly fit your mobile devices and cables, so you can charge and sync with the peace of mind that your devices are safe and protected.

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ZNAPS

70,122 backers pledged $3,007,370 to help bring this project to life.

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ZNAPS -The $9 Magnetic Adapter for your mobile devices

by ZNAPS

Update #43

Jul 28, 2016

UPDATE #43

614 Comments

375 likes

Dear Backers,

We sincerely apologize for all the delays. Everything we’ve done so far has been to ensure ZNAPS reaches your hands. We never planned for the problems and setbacks we’ve encountered and we are deeply sorry for mishandling them.

Since the beginning, we’ve wanted to keep everyone in the loop and really share this journey of manufacturing a new product together. However, somewhere along the way we’ve slipped up on communications a little bit. We want to apologize to everyone again for all the mistakes we’ve made. We don’t want to make excuses, but we’ve had to deal with a lot of frustration and stress from working with our manufacturers and suppliers. Nonetheless, we’ve continued to work really hard to get ZNAPS shipped and we have made significant progress since our last update.

For this update, we would like to start making amends by sharing more about the manufacturing process as a whole and the key areas where we have experienced a lot of difficulties. In doing so, we hope everyone gains a better understanding of everything that has happened.

A Little About the Technology

One of the reasons why ZNAPS has been so successful is its small size. No other copycat adapter has been able to copy ZNAPS’ size. That’s probably because they don’t have the same internal design as ours and they definitely aren’t using small enough pogo pins like we are. We originally didn’t want to expose any details about the internal structure of ZNAPS design, but have now decided to share it with everyone because 1) it’s an integral part of what we want to communicate in this update and 2) the patent issues we’ve experienced seems to have stabilized.

One of the key challenges we had to overcome from the beginning was to find small enough pogo pins that were also able to support a high enough electric current. We quickly found that the standard pogo pin design for the size we want simply didn’t work. Please take a look at the diagram below:

The standard pogo pin design allows for some of the electric current to be leaked into the spring. The spring can still conduct the electric current leaked into it, but due to it being very thin, the electric resistance is increased, so the electric current is conducted very inefficiently. Thus, the overall electric current that can pass through the pogo pin is reduced.

To solve the above problem, we found a solution that would not increase the size of the internal components of the ZNAPS adapter while maintaining the same electric current capacity. The answer was pogo pins with insulator ball technology.

As shown in the diagram, the insulator ball prevents the electric current from flowing through the spring and forcing the electric current to only flow through the body of the pogo pin. In this way, the pogo pins are able to support up to double its original electric current capacity.

The Problem

One of the main problems we’ve experienced, other than quality control, is slow rate of production. In order to produce the quantity of ZNAPS enough for Kickstarter backers and for our future sales, a fully automatic assembly is a must. However, our manufacturer has been really slow in ramping this process up to get the machines for automatic assembly ready for us.

Below you can see how the internal components of ZNAPS is mounted and the pogo pins are inserted by hand. To perform this simple action by hand is extremely time consuming, not to mention not as accurate, which explains the quality control issues we’ve experienced.

Knowing that we had already delayed ZNAPS shipping date a couple times before and we didn’t want to make our backers wait any longer, we took it upon ourselves to do the final assembly of ZNAPS ourselves. And that is why the first few shipments of ZNAPS has been small batch shipments.

The Solution

Due to their slow rate of production, the only viable solution to ramp up production was to change manufacturers. We’ve been working very hard for the past few months visiting multiple other possible manufacturers who would be able to help us and have finally come to terms with one. Changing manufacturers was a very difficult decision to make, but we were driven by the need to make sure all our backers get their rewards. Our new manufacturer is fully suited for automatic assembly and has even quoted a lower price per unit.

At the same time, we started receiving feedback from the first batch recipients. The feedback noted that ZNAPS still lacked stability. Please see video below:

This latest development was a shock. We had already double checked all the steps in the production process and done extensive quality control tests to ensure the assembled ZNAPS were working properly, because we didn’t want to disappoint our backers again. Here is where our new manufacturer stepped in to help. They were able to discern that the instability was due to pogo pin physical defects which do not affect performance until after short term use.

Although the durability defects we previously discovered were corrected, the pogo pins ended up having new internal physical defects. The defects are clearly shown in the graphic above and is the main cause for the instability. After further investigation, we discovered the pogo pin supplier from China made sure to provide very well made pogo pins to pass the quality control tests, but shipped us poorly made ones. In short, the pogo pin supplier tricked us, but we share half of that blame too, because we were the ones who chose to trust them to help in the production of ZNAPS. So once again, we want to sincerely apologize for our poor judgment, which resulted in the delays.

What’s Next?

Due to the problems with manufacturing described above, we have decided to temporarily suspend the shipments of ZNAPS until we have everything resolved. We have already lined up a new Taiwanese owned and operated pogo pin supplier. There was supposed to be a shipment of old pogo pins on July 20, but we have already rejected the order and got a full refund. The new batch by the new supplier is estimated to be ready on August 3 and we will post an update by August 5 at the latest. At that time, we will inform everyone about the new plan of action and timeline. In closing, we want to thank everyone again for your patience and we are confident ZNAPS will be ready for all of you very soon.