March-April Progress Report

While re-working some prototype parts, I had a shop accident.   Being that I’m the head lackey for XOOT design and build this will slow things down for a bit (Doctor’s orders).   Kind of puts the cherry on top of some difficult progress we’ve had these last two months.

• • Finally got springs in from our selected spring manufacturer (months late) but they only partial resembled what we had specified.  It takes lot of bending, grinding and welding to get them in a form we can test.
  • Testing has shown other prototype parts were made incorrectly.  Such as, a part’s profile is perfect but it’s made of too thick of steel.  Thus.. more rework.
  • We also had our own mistakes.  Computer design algorithms specified making parts with a specific shape.  The mechanical engineer realized “that’s impossible”  so made some slight adjustments.  The end result was that the screens would hit to main XOOT arm when rotating.

Each problem has been or is being addressed.   We just need to make sure everything is right before going into production.  Things get very expensive if we get it wrong then.

• Take the early version of a unit tester shown last progress report.  That has gone from prototype to completed hardware and we made a few spares.

The software has been improved to help diagnose manufacturing errors.

• Other testing hardware and processes have been developed.

• The time consuming “documentation”, for manufacturing and testing is in good shape.

All our efforts are focused on getting manufacturing ready.  It just takes a lot of work and has some unexpected turns. 

Thanks for all that have written us with encouragement.  We’ll keep doing our best to make XOOT a product that’s worth you expectations.

– Chris

(XOOT Founder)