Hi all,
Happy Thanksgiving! Due to the Thanksgiving Holiday, this month's blog update is earlier than ever as next Friday will be December, and with the Thanksgiving Holiday, Wednesday becomes the last working day of this week.
A shorter update overall but lots of good news - thus please grab some hot chocolate and let's get underway!
Amora Gem Update:
TIGER-1 upgraded to 1.1...working flawlessly! To pick up where we left off last month, we had our v3 nanopolish parts arrive and we were just kicking off full Soaring Hearts Eternity production.
Unfortunately both of the first runs then crashed out an hour and a half hour before completion due to error's we'd never seen. Basically, instead of taking say 30 microns off for a stage, TIGER suddenly started taking 300 microns and ruining the run...or instead of 20, 200 microns.
The root cause turned out to be that we had 4 weeks of non-stop rain here in Seattle, and the humidity built up inside TIGER's body and affected the electrical contacts.
Thus with data being transmitted as digital spikes of voltage the moisture was disrupting the data in the commands issued, resulting in random and never before seen errors.
Thus, we opted to take TIGER offline and proceed with a full electronics upgrade (with waterproof connectors) that we had been planning, along with a rebuilding of TIGER's wrists and tuning of all it's arms, plus a few software algorithm improvements. We also installed a fan inside TIGER and put in a de-humidifier in the lab.
TIGER has thus became TIGER 1.1 and we couldn't be happier with the results. Production for Soaring Hearts Eternity has now achieved near 'push button' processing and TIGER's precision is the best it's ever been.
Here's a photo of the new motherboard equivalent so you can see what was involved with some of the electronic's upgrade. This is the same new electronics that were built for TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 so now all of our TIGER's will be on the latest and greatest electronics design.
Soaring Hearts Eternity production - excellent production flow at last: As mentioned, production for Soaring Hearts Eternity has ramped up nicely with TIGER 1.1. We had a restock of both 6.5mm/7mm and also 8mm this past week.
Everything promptly sold out but we expect to continue to have record weekly production going forward. December will be 7.5mm and 8mm primarily.
In addition, we're into new rough and the latest restock was all E or F color and only 1 G color.
Thus, we also expect most of the new restocks to be colorless production as well.
TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 - all parts complete. Assembly starts next week: I'm happy to note that all parts for TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 have completed machining and are now in shipping to our assembly warehouse.
We're hoping to get TIGER-2 online as early as Christmas and TIGER-3 by Valentines Day.
This of course will let us triple production early in 2017, and allow us a lot more flexibility in terms of size range and eventually shapes.
With TIGER 1.1 proving all of our design and upgrades, we are looking at building as many at 10 TIGER's in 2017.
Eventually TIGER's will be dedicated to various cuts in order to make production as efficient as possible. Thus, for example, one TIGER could end up doing nothing but AVC, while another TIGER could end up doing entirely Krupps, etc.
BTD News:
Elysium diamond wedding bands for men: We're currently evaluating adding the Elysium diamond wedding bands to our inventory as a new option for mens wedding bands. These are solid black diamond bands, made from polycrystalline diamond.
Basically 17-30 carats of small lab grown diamond are fused together at high temp and pressure so that the diamonds grow together and form a continuous band of solid diamond.
Because they are not single crystal, they are black as the random orientation of the original single diamonds means light cannot return and thus the entire ring is a deep black.
We'll know for sure next month after some additional review, but thought these might be a unique option for men's bands that was only recently available. It's also one that solves the biggest concern with men's bands, namely durability. Tungsten carbide has been popular due to it's hardness, but polycrystalline diamond is exponentially harder and also much lighter.
Here's two videos to show their unique properties:
Hardness - you can scratch cement, no damage to the band:
Heat conduction - due to being solid diamond, it has excellent heat conduction such that you can take it off and melt through an ice cube:
Misc:
When a brand name means nothing... After we purchased the aforementioned de-humidifier for our lab, we then received an email about a recall notice for various de-humidifiers. What was interesting was how many 'distinct brands' were in fact nothing but the same Chinese made d-humidifier under the covers.
As part of the recall, the US consumer govt site showed there were 53 brand names being recalled because apparently, these were all actually made by 1 single Chinese manufacturer (Midea).
This included names like Honeywell, Sylvania, GE, Kenmore, etc. which you would have assumed all had their own plants and making unique, distinct products.
Instead you have 1 actual maker putting 53 different brand labels on their product, so your trust in 'brand X' would have been misplaced since they were all being made at the same place, with the same now recalled flaw, but with a different label on the front. And hence all being recalled for the exact same problem.
This is similar in fact to many of the new 'moissanite' brands popping up - for most of these, there's one Chinese maker supplying, but everyone is putting their own brand name on the same product causing consumers to think there's all kinds of new moissanite makers entering the market.
For reference, we are the actual manufacturer of the Amora Gem, cut by TIGER. It's not just a brand name slapped on the same gem everyone else has.
Here's the full recall name list of the 1 single Midea manufactured de-humidifier to show the 53 brand names with 1 actual maker.
"This recall involves 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 65, 70, and 75-pint dehumidifiers with the following brand names:
Airworks, Alen, Arcticaire, Arctic King, Beaumark, Coolworks, ComfortAire, Comfort Star, Continental Electic, Crosley, Daewoo, Danby, Danby & Designer, Dayton, Degree, Diplomat, Edgestar, Excell, Fellini, Forest Air, Frigidaire, GE, Grunaire, Hanover, Honeywell, Homestyles, Hyundai, Ideal Air, Kenmore (Canada), Keystone, Kul, Midea, Nantucket, Ocean Breeze, Pelonis, Perfect Aire, Perfect Home, Polar Wind, Premiere, Professional Series, Royal Sovereign, Simplicity, Sunbeam, SPT, Sylvania, TGM, Touch Point, Trutemp, Uberhaus, Westpointe, Winix, and Winixl."
Actual maker = Midea.
https://www.cpsc.gov/…/2017/Dehumidifiers-Made-by-Midea-Rec…
https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cpsc.gov%2FRecalls%2F2017%2FDehumidifiers-Made-by-Midea-Recalled&h=5AQE1Q2HW&enc=AZPg7orOgxCcIiA85da6YJtA6fqB4a5L9rRaiUQwVm7gH7T_dfFkxtWpG0xrhjI7npm907UCo1zplVXZWqdueu9rNc50CSDaZL-EjwqGvChtuO_-jaxSEC7n82VwCQOTVNOUaSu6tVTV1RMdHouddDmLV5DcbA2PDS9YQMBC61R56JPmGv93Lfz4XK6he0CKIaXWVbUCqMYpY_-tLIVSbyTR&s=1
A view of Mt. Rainier: On a different topic, I thought I'd share this stunning photo of Mt. Rainier and a herd of elk for those who may have never visited the Seattle area (where we produce the Amora Gems). Mt. Rainier dominates the landscape for the entire Seattle area, so it's a daily view in many respects from various highways and open spaces. Elk are also abundant in the more wooded regions.
Anyway, enjoy a quick trip to near where we produce the Amora Gems. Photo credit -
Ian McRae Photography | Facebook
Happy Thanksgiving to all! We'll have one more update right after Christmas to catch up on the Soaring Hearts Eternity production and TIGER-2 and T3 expansion for the last update of 2016!
Best regards,
Less