Cloak: The Road To Completion

10 days ago Jordan, Steve & I set sail for the wondrous and industrious land of Shenzhen, China. We boarded our flights with fistfuls of Ambien and a whole lot of giddy anticipation.

The plan for the trip: be on the ground in person when the tooling for the Cloak begins to be tested.

Last Sunday afternoon (a week ago yesterday) we saw what is called in the injection molding world as ‘first shots’ or ‘T1′. First shots are usually a crapshoot. Sometimes, your new tools will kick out near perfect parts.

Sometimes, you’re miles away from getting done… mis-calculated shrinkage (that’s what she said), uneven plastic flow, poor surface textures, etc.

The Cloak is comprised of 10 individual parts (9 unique), all of which are manufactured by 6 hardened steel tools.

A funny thing happens when you and your team incessantly worry about the design of a durable/functional hinge mechanism… the hinge mechanism works perfectly.

Not just one of them, but all three! In fact, the hinge related parts (E, F, I, G, D, C above) were the first thing to get our seal of approval. Production has begun on all of these parts.

We saw/confirmed our colorways.

We’ve decided to move forward with all four colorways which were part of the initial rendering family. We rarely do this, but are excited about our decision to ‘color up’ for Cloak.

On the iPad “skin” (Part H) we were close on our first shots, with two major areas needing improvement:

Area of improvement 1: We saw a bit of warpage/believed there could be a tighter fit on the iPad. We went ahead and fixed this by green lighting modifications to the tool.

Area of improvement 2: We were unhappy with the surface texture, and preferred the nice soft-touch feel of a silicone over the more rubbery feel of a TPE (thermo-plastic elastomer used in PowerCurl/Cordies). Unfortunately, though, moving to a silicone would mean a new tool (as silicone is done with a compression molding process vs. the injection molding process the skin was currently tooled up for).

The top cover (Parts A/B), surprisingly, were the source of our stress.

When the Cloak hit threshold, we immediately started working with our suppliers to finalize a design. The initial idea was to have the top cover be made of a hard plastic (ABS, or the like), but then we collectively decided we may want to get a bit more aggressive on the design and look to use an over-molding process.

The over-molding process on Cloak was suggested because it would allow the entire front cover to have a nice, soft, rubbery surface texture, but maintain the structural strength needed to give Cloak its specified function. In short: it helped allow us to make the Cloak feel/function as gorgeously as it looks.

Our engineers were a bit worried about the overmold because of the necessary flatness of the top cover, and our desire to keep the front face entirely blemish-free (normally, factories would like a pin or 5 to hold both sides in place). Our suppliers felt as though the top cover over-mold process would not be an issue, so we proceeded without thinking twice.

Upon seeing the first shots, we realized that things weren’t looking so hot.

Precisely why we came to observe first shots in person. We expected these kind of issues with the hinges, though, not the front cover! Immediately, our team and our supplier teams started working on what they called ‘countermeasures’. Their first suggestion (dead serious) was to add the pins on the front face, and use an NBA sticker to cover them up “because all Americans love NBA”.

Obviously, this was beyond unacceptable to us, so we kept on thinkin’. The suppliers believed that shooting the structural part in PC (polycarbonate) instead of ABS, and adding an extra millimeter of TPE (the rubbery stuff) to the top surface may help the plastic flow better and fix our problems.

We greenlit the ‘countermeasure’ idea, and waited four days to see the new tool/parts.

The front face started to totally fill (although you could still see the support ribs from the interior part), and the back was almost filling. This is an issue that could probably be resolved in a day or two if we wanted. But we were facing an even bigger issue.

The problem with this ‘countermeasure’ wasn’t the tooling anymore, it was the fact that the weight of the Cloak started to become an issue.

My experience at mophie taught me a few things — not the least of which was that case sales are very dependent on providing function while not getting in the way or taking away from the device it is protecting. The added millimeter of material, and the change from ABS to PC, started to bulk up the case to the point where the weight of the Cloak was nearly equalling the weight of the iPad. This was incredibly unacceptable. So, back to the drawing board on parts A and B.

We need to keep the front face as is (because we are all in love with it, and impossible isn’t a word we understand… although we hear it from our suppliers a lot). We decided we needed to go back to the original thickness, and stick with ABS over PC.

We’ve pushed forward by opening a new tool, using silicone compression molding over an ABS inner piece for the top cover. This will reduce the part weight and height by over 30% of our second shots.

The silicone will stretch over the front face to the back face, and stay there. It would not totally cover the back face as we originally designed, but would allow for the Cloak to maintain the sleekness/protection it needs in order to be a successful product once it launches.

For those wondering, the hard plastic parts will never come in contact with the surface of your iPad. Everything that touches the iPad is soft and shock-absorbent.

The packaging is looking FANTASTIC.

While the production schedule was falling behind a bit, we were presently surprised on Wednesday morning when we saw a giant truck pull up to our warehouse and drop off 10,000 cloak boxes. Looking really good. Now if only we had something to put inside!

Recap & Game Plan:

To very simply state the status of Cloak: of the 10 parts, 7 have been green lit for production (so, say we’re 70% of the way complete). Add in the georgous packaging, and I’d put us at 75% to 78% complete.

Next steps for part H (iPad skin): We will be doing two things in parallel, making modifications to our current TPE tool to get a tighter fit, and opening up a silicone tool to decide if we’d rather go ahead with that material/process. Both are expected to be done and ready for testing within 10 days.

Next steps for part A/B (top cover): We will be moving to the stretch silicone process outlined above. This means minor modifications to part B (3-4 days), and then a new compression mold for part A (7-12 days).

Next steps for part C, D, E, F, G, H, I: These parts have been given the go ahead for production, we’ve cut a purchase order for 10,000 of each of these parts (20,000 in the case of part F).

We are now very confident that Cloak will be complete and ready for order confirmation/SKU selection within 10-15 days.

We realize this represents a 2 week delay from our original Cloak timeline, but unfortunately this kind of stuff isn’t a science… yet. Sometimes you nail it and hit milestones exactly, and sometimes you’re off by a bit. The important thing for Quirky is that the products that come onto the market are fantastic, and live up to their specification/design/name/story. We’re confident Cloak is going to be a killer product for all of us.

While some of the above might sound scary to you all (ugly parts, delays, etc)… I can promise you that this is par for the course, and should not be a cause for concern. The road to perfection in product development is a bumpy one. The more patient you are, the better the product you’ll wind up with.

If you can’t stand your naked iPad any longer, and the next 2-3 weeks are going to kill you, I honestly would recommend going with another case (we love case-mate‘s stuff). If you’re willing to stick it out another couple of weeks, and get creative around protecting your iPad… I promise you’re within weeks of having the best damn case on the market.

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I was sitting at the lobby bar at the W in Hong Kong on Friday night using the (less then gorgeous) T1 sample of cloak, and was stopped and asked where I got the case by over 7 people. Prior to this I was stopped and asked about my iPad, and now I’m being asked about the sexy thing my iPad is sitting in. Signs of the good things to come.

Many thanks go out to Jordan & Steve for staying on guard roughly 20 hours a day and seeing the Cloak through to completion. They’ve really made this their baby, and for that we’re all grateful & confident that we’ll wind up with something we can all be proud of.

Check out a quick video of the latest Cloak revision.