Production Report #3: Wrapster

During the last 3 weeks:

Brian’s last update on Wrapster finished up with us hoping to test samples in our final production material (TPE plus 2% PP alloy) and review the final colorways.

The last thing that stood in the way of this ‘final production’ sample was to make a simple change: we needed a little more material added, 0.03 inches, in order to fully secure the iPhone 3G and 4G. Simple right? No. We had a long, drawn-out back and forth with the factory, a discourse which made Gone With The Wind look like a children’s short story. The first issue was that the factory kept asking us to print iterations of design changes, despite us repeatedly telling them that the shrinkage and material difference found in off-tool samples rendered our Bertha prints bad reference samples.

The second issue was that the factory’s first stab at adding material was adding fairly ugly ribs along the inside surfaces of Wrapster:

Well this was not a good start. Luckily, Brian stepped in and gave them 4 solid options to pick from:

Using their knowledge of the material, shrink rates and tool modifications they came back to us with the answer:

“We would like to suggest working towards a happy medium between option 2 and 3… we can call it 2.5″

No. We told them to do option 4. Despite their feedback that it was the ‘most difficult to achieve’ due to reworking both ‘core and cavity’ of the tool, we knew that the outcome would be the best for everyone: Quirky, retailers and community. Despite any doubts our manufacturer had, this change was in many ways the simplest answer: to subtly increase the wall thickness along Wrapster’s central gap by removing steel from the tool. This small change would hopefully ensure that Wrapster held the iPhone 3G and 4G in landscape position for watching movies, youtube etc.

The timeline from the factory came through:

Reengineering of part for mold adjustment: 9-8 thru 9-24
Electrode Design: 9/27 (Mon) to 9/28
Electrode Programming/Cutting: 9/28 to 9/29
EDM/Burn: 9/30 to 10/2
Polish, Assemble, Sample: 10/2 to 10/5
Parts to arrive at Natech for review 10/6, deliver to Quirky 10/7

So after more delay while we printed their revised file, we moved forward with their timeline. We will be honest here, we were getting… frustrated, to put it mildly. In our minds we couldn’t help but wonder how this was all taking so long. Wrapster is, after all, a lump of plastic. A very cool and functional piece of plastic, but polymer nonetheless. With fingers crossed, we awaited Rev 18 of the Wrapster…

On October 5th, an e-mail came through from the factory:

“Great news! We just evaluated your parts and the mold change is a success… the part seems to behave much like a new pair of leather boots”.

Wait. What? Leather boots? This didn’t sound good…

They went on to say:

“We feel we have Wrapster exactly where it needs to be dimensionally for the secret agent material we formulated. I am confident your team will agree.”

Secret agent material? Ok, everyone calm down, let’s wait for the samples to come in…

On October 7th, as promised the final samples came in and were indeed perfect! Brian immediately had 20 people test the product for the next few days and put the product through its paces. Finally we had a product that fulfilled the design spec: hold and manage headphone cables, hold iPhone 3G and 4G in landscape mode. Phew!

In the next 3 weeks:

We should be seeing the final 4 colors of Wrapster no later than October 19th. Pending color approval we will be moving swiftly into final production. We will also be receiving a full production timeline asap. Hopefully the next production update will be live from an injection molding production line!

The Wrapster is available for $6.50 in the Quirky store.