Manufacturing Update 12: Mass Assembly Is Completed

Dear Kelloists,

Great news! Mass assembly has started last week and ended just today. And it went pretty well: we didn’t encounter any major issue and the global quality was in line with what we had in mind.

Here are some pictures of the manufacturing of the Mint Green units.

The circuit board of Kello's buttons

Kello's core parts on the assembly line
 

Mounting a Kello
 

Mint green units waiting for quality control
 

The Green Brothers

Ultimate quality control
 

Packing a unit
 

Boxes ready to be shipped
 

One of our master cartons that contain 12 units each
 

What are the next steps?

All units are being transferred to our third party logistics vendor and will be shipped to you in the upcoming days. We’re planning on shipping ~500 units per day and everything should be sent out during the next weeks. We’ll publish an update this week to give you more insights on the shipping process.

When will I be delivered?

Delivery times depend on the country you live in. Here’s the list:

• Argentina: 5-7 days
• Australia: 9-24 days
• Austria: 15-22 days
• Bahrain: 3-4 days
• Belgium: 15-22 days
• Brazil: 6-9 days
• Canada: 6-9 days
• Chile: 14-28 days
• China: 2-4 days
• Czech Republic: 15-22 days
• Denmark: 6-9 days
• Faroe Islands: 15-20 days
• Finland: 13-18 days
• France: 7-14 days
• Germany: 5-10 days
• Greece: 15-22 days
• Hong Kong: 1-2 days
• Hungary: 17-23 days
• Iceland: 15-22 days
• India: 5-13 days
• Indonesia: 7-14 days
• Ireland: 15-22 days
• Israel: 6-9 days
• Italy: 15-22 days
• Japan: 6-9 days
• Luxembourg: 15-20 days
• Macao: 7-14 days
• Malaysia: 3-5 days
• Mexico: 15-20 days
• Netherlands: 6-9 days
• New Zealand: 5-12 days
• Norway: 10-20 days
• Poland: 15-22 days
• Portugal: 15-22 days
• Romania: 15-22 days
• Russia: 6-9 days
• Saudi Arabia: 15-20 days
• Serbia: 17-25 days
• Singapore: 10-17 days
• South Africa: 4-9 days
• South Korea: 7-10 days
• Spain: 7-14 days
• Sri Lanka: 3-6 days
• Sweden: 6-9 days
• Switzerland: 6-9 days
• Taiwan: 2-4 days
• Thailand: 7-14 days
• United Arab Emirates: 3-5 days
• United Kingdom: 10-20 days
• United States: 7-10 days

Note that we are sending your units through postal couriers, and potential taxes & duties might be due on your end.

That's it for today!

Thanks for your unfailing support.

The Kello Team

Manufacturing Update 11: On Our Way to Mass Assembly

Dear Kelloists,

Flash update to keep you in sync with what’s going on at the factory. We’ve finished pre-assembly and are now going to start mass assembly. 

What Is Pre-assembly?

Pre-assembly is the very last step before starting mass assembly. A team of 15 workers is formed on how to assemble the units and they assemble a test batch of 32 units. We control these products one by one to pinpoint issues that might happen during mass assembly.

We were here the entire time to make sure nothing was forgotten and we have green-lighted the 32 units. We’ll ship 15 of them next Monday to the volunteers from the last update.

Following our timeline, mass assembly will start tomorrow (July 7th). It will take 4 to 5 days to make all of the units and shipping to backers will start on Monday, July 17th.

Pictures of the Pre-assembly line

Inserting the LED screen in the front panel

Putting the speaker in its case

Some units waiting for their speaker

Kello's front panels

Our assembly line

Complete units that passed the QC test

SMT (Surface Mounting Technology) machines

Those are robots that pick and place electronic components on Kello’s motherboard.

Some Kello motherboards

This one didn’t pass QC because a resistor wasn’t properly soldered

All pre-production units being thoroughly tested by us

What about shipping?

As stated above, we’ll receive all 3000 units at our third party logistic vendor’s warehouse end of next week, and we’ll start shipping the following week.

Delivery Times

We are shipping all units from Hong Kong, using world renowned postal services, so your units will be in good hands. Delivery times depend on the courier and the country you live in, but in most cases they are between 7 and 14 working days, starting from the date we ship your package. Every package will have a tracking number that you will receive by email right after your unit is shipped.

Addresses

You should have received an email asking you to confirm your address. Please confirm your address as soon as possible in order to prevent delay in shipping your unit. If you haven’t received the email, please tell us at support@getkello.com.

We will keep you posted on how mass production goes!

Cheers,

The Kello Team.

Manufacturing Update 10: Mass Production is a GO!

Dear Kelloists, 

We’re so excited! We’ve finally started the very first step of mass production (plastic injection), and are moving very fast towards the next stages of mass manufacturing (circuit boards and assembly). 

Plastic Injection

Stuff’s getting real. Following our timeline, last Wednesday we started injecting the plastic parts of all units.

Plastic injection is the very first part of mass producing for most consumer electronics products. High temperature plastic (250 °C/480 °F) is injected with high pressure in big steel moulds in order to shape plastic parts that will later be assembled into the final product.

It was so exciting to see Kellos coming out of these huge injection machines. Check out the video below to have a peek at the whole process!

Some trivia facts: 

• Our plastic factory also makes some of the critical gear parts of some major German automotive brands (=we’re in good hands).
• They can inject the plastic parts of up to 500 Kellos per day. It takes 42 seconds for each coloured shell to be injected: this is unusually long because the shell is very thick and the surface quality of this part is critical.
• After coating the shell with the Soft Touch layer, each part must be cured in a oven for 40 minutes!

Photo gallery of our visit:

Molds, molds, molds

The molds of Kello’s core and front panel

Parts that are ready to go to the next stage

Plastic chips pool!

The cemetery of the parts that didn’t meet our quality standards (fortunately this plastic will be recycled)

Next Step: Circuit Boards

Plastic injection is moving along fast and should be finished next week. Meanwhile, we’re working on the printed circuit boards but we hit a speed bump.

In order to make Kello’s motherboard, our factory has to solder hundreds of tiny componentson a circuit board using high-precision pick&place robots. But first, they have to actually make the base circuit board and this step took a bit longer than expected because of the complexity of our motherboard. The matter is resolved now and we expect to receive the boards this coming Monday.

Kello motherboards

Timeline

Let’s talk dates. We don’t want to commit on hard dates just yet because so many things can happen, especially with the circuit boards being slightly delayed. However, we’re confident that shipping will start in the first half of July. We’ll know more in the upcoming days.

After manufacturing the plastic parts and the circuit boards, the last step to assemble the two, test that everything works perfectly and put the product in its box. This assembly phase will start in the upcoming days and, by the end of the month, we’ll have 30 units that we’ll inspect one by one before moving to mass assembly of all units. These pre-production samples help fine-tune the actual production process, and the resulting product will be commercial grade (= exactly the same as the production product). 

In Other News...

Packaging

Packaging is validated. We received a few days ago the prototypes of the boxes and we’re very happy with the result:

We think it’s simple, beautiful, and to the point, just like Kello. But good looks aren’t enough, it also has to be sturdy and protect the unit no matter what. That’s why we tried to put them under a lot of stress. Check for yourself:

Apps

Good news: the iOS app has been validated by Apple. It’s ready to be published on the App Store. For now we’re keeping it private for our internal testing but as soon as we start shipping, you will be able to download it on your iPhone.

The Android app is also making great progress, and we’re testing it every day.

Shipping Preparation

We’ve hand-picked the courier for each 66 countries we’re shipping to, and our third party logistics vendor is ready to ship more than 2,800 boxes. More info in the next update!

That’s it for today. We’re so excited to bring these babies to your home! We’re almost there, it’s the very last stretch and you won’t have to wait too long before having your own Kello on your bedside.

Until then, don’t hesitate to give us a shout-out on hello@getkello.com.

Cheers,

The Kello Team.

Manufacturing Update 9: Final Production Prototypes

Dear Kelloists, 

As we’re entering the final stretch of Kello’s manufacturing, we’re more pumped than ever to get your Kello to your bedside table. Let’s check what we’ve been up to lately.

Final Samples

Last week, we received the final prototypes (commercial samples) before mass production. These samples included all mechanical changes we asked (in particular the ones addressing the durability issues we encountered last month), and enabled our manufacturer to test their production line.

We oversaw the assembly of the first Kellos on the production line. It was very rewarding to witness the birth of these units! 

See below a short video of the assembly:

And a family photo of these units that we've been testing for a week:

Timeline 

We’re getting closer than ever to mass production. The factory is ready and hopefully all components will be there on time. We plan to push the mass production button around June 21th. It will last for ~7 working days then the units will be shipped to you from Hong Kong starting end of June.

We have chosen our third party logistics vendor and you will receive an email containing all tracking info when we ship. We’ll explain thoroughly the shipping process in an upcoming update.   

The ANCHOR NIGHT Cable, now in USB-C

As you might know, we’re partnering with NATIVE UNION to give you an exclusive 50% discount on their gorgeous 6.5 feet long, Kevlar®-reinforced ANCHOR NIGHT cables.

This offer ends on Wednesday, May 31st and is only valid for you backers! 

And here’s the good news. You asked in the comments, we delivered: you can now choose to get the USB-C version!

If you're not a backer of Kello, it's not too late, go to our Indiegogo InDemand campaign and back Kello. You will receive an email asking for the color you want and giving you the possibility to add a ANCHOR NIGHT Cable to your pledge.

That's it for today. As always, if you have any question or remark, shoot in the comments.

Cheers,

The Kello Team.

Manufacturing Update 8: The Importance of Durability

Dear Kelloists,

April was a very intense month. We’re moving forward on all aspects of the product but unfortunately we stumbled upon an issue that will cause a delay. 

Logistics & Packaging

As we’re approaching the final steps of manufacturing, we’re now finalizing two major subjects for any hardware project: packaging and logistics.

Packaging 

A good box: 

• has to be strong (delivering services tend to not treat packages kindly), 
• must protect the product well, 
• must look good.

We’ve spent some time on it and we’re very happy with the final result. Below a pictures of the development of these boxes (we won’t show you the final box to avoid spoiling the surprise!).

Durability

During the month of April, our manufacturer ran some destructive testing in order to test Kello’s durability.

Fatigue Testing 

One of the most common tests is very straightforward: pressing a button until it breaks. We used a pneumatic arm to press every Kello button 5,000 times.

After all these presses, Kello was still good as new. The mechanical feedback of the buttons didn’t get loose, and all clicks were correctly registered. 

Drop Testing

Another crucial test is taking a bunch of Kellos and drop them from a height of 1 meter (3 feet and 3 inches).

The outcome of this test was not as good as we hoped: more often that we liked, Kello’s colored shell ended up separated from its the core. Nothing that couldn’t be managed (it is super easy to re-clip the coloured shell part to the core part) but we feared that after several drops things might start to break.

Everybody expects an alarm clock to be durable and we know people won’t be easy with the product. That’s why we decided to rework the molds and slightly change the mechanical design.

This change causes a 4-week delay. We are now going to ship end of next month (4th week of June).

We know this is a big disappointment and quite frankly we’re pretty bummed as well, especially because everything else is ready and we could have pressed the button and ship this version end of May, but after many discussions we realized that 1 month is a good trade-off for a better product that won’t get weakened after a few drops on the floor. 

Next Steps

Production Samples

This change shifted our entire timeline. While our engineers already came up with a better design, we’ll get the final production samples in mid-May, and start mass production in mid-June. 

Apps 

On the bright side, this delay gives us the opportunity to continue working on the apps and the firmware and polish everything a little further.

iOS App

We’re putting the final touches on the iOS app and our next milestone is the App Store submission.

Android App

The Android app is now our top priority. Most of the core functionalities are ready and we’re now focusing on debugging. When it’s stable enough, we’ll start working on the implementation of the Sleep Programs.

You’ll find below a quick demo video of the Android app.

That’s it for this month. If you have any comment or remark, feel free to post a comment!

Best,

The Kello Team.

Manufacturing Update 7: Iterating on Tooling

Dear Kelloists,

Another week, another round of development, testing, prototypes and progress. 

It’s the little things that matter 

10 days ago, we got the first injected sample of Kello, made with the same molds and tooling as the Kellos you will get. This was a huge step forward as we moved from 3D printed prototypes to injected parts using industrial-grade tools.

We called this prototype EVP (Engineering Validation Prototype) 1.0 and we were quite happy with it, but it had its issues.

For instance, under certain angles, the speaker grid could be seen through the fabric...

...the back button was sticking out a bit too far…  

...and the screen was too bright to be used in a bedroom, even dimmed at minimum.

We submitted a list of changes to our manufacturing partner last week and yesterday, we received the first version with some of the new mechanical changes, made with the final material and colors. Therefore we’re proud to present you… Kello EVP 1.2!

We’re quite pleased with these prototypes. One of the trickiest parts was nailing the right feeling for the “snooze” button: as you snooze your alarm by pressing Kello’s head, the whole colored shell moves downwards, and it was a mechanical challenge to come up with a design that would prevent the button jamming or being stuck. Our engineers nailed it, and the feeling is very satisfying.

This prototype still has some room for improvement but we’re 90% there. As we still have 2 rounds of iterations to go, we’re confident that everything will be perfect before kicking off mass production in late May.

 

Moving towards production

For mass production, we’re writing a list of the tests every Kello must pass to be considered “commercial-grade quality”.

Some of the tests each Kello will have to pass

 All major mechanical changes have been locked, and the design of the electronic motherboard has been frozen.

Kello's final motherboard

 The design of all internal components is finished and we’re now in a fine-tuning phase, making sure each part injects and assembles well by refining our molds.

A Kello ready to be assembled

During the upcoming days, we will start design and assembly testing. We’ll basically take a few prototypes and torture them: check if they can survive multiple 4 feet (1m20) falls, high and cold temperatures, thousands of presses on the buttons... Kello must be durable even under difficult conditions.

That’s it for today. If you have any question or comment, shoot below!

Thanks again for your support,

The Kello Team

Manufacturing Update 6: Our First Injected Kello

Dear Kelloists,

Things are starting to get really exciting as we’re now getting our first pre-production samples. Check out this month’s progress!   

Tooling and Molds

As stated in our last update, we’re in the process of making our injection molds. The first version of the molds has been released and we have just injected our very first Kello! It’s in black because it makes it easier to see little defects in the plastic.

Our first injected prototype

The quality of the mold is very good for a first iteration. We do have a few things we need to improve on and it’s perfectly normal, such as the feeling of the snooze or the finishing of some parts. As every Kello we'll make will be injected using these molds, we want to be extremely confident that they are good quality.

Our manufacturer is currently making a new iteration of the molds. We expect a new set of prototypes by the end of next week.

New iOS App

As you know, we already have a fully functioning iOS app, and we have improved its design to have a better coherence with our website, packaging, and brand universe.

We’ve added a few features and we also fixed all the bugs we’ve noticed since we started testing and using Kello (for more than a year now!).

View fullsize

Android App

Last week we kicked off the development of our Android app and our developer is working on it as we speak. More to come soon.

View fullsize

Firmware

We’re now putting the final touches to Kello’s firmware. First, we need to be extra sure that it’s completely bug-free as when we’ll ship, we’ll have less control on its most critical parts, and second, we want it to look good.

That’s why we added some nice animations on Kello. We hope you like them!

What’s next? 

Next week we’ll get more prototypes, that we’ll intensively use and test for 2 weeks. In late April, our manufacturer will make another iteration of Kellos that we’ll use for final testing and product certification.

We’re still in line to ship late May and we’re working as hard as we can to meet this deadline.

Manufacturing Update 5: Making of the Molds

Dear Kelloists,

We've moving forward in the mass manufacturing process and soon you'll be able to enjoy your Kellos. Here's a roundup of this month's news.

Mold Manufacturing

We're still making the molds used for plastic injection. It's a lengthy process because we only have one shot at this: as every Kello will be made using these molds, their quality has to be perfect.

So far, we're on track and we are visiting our factory on a weekly basis to be sure we're not missing anything.

We made a short video of the manufacturing process of Kello's molds:

Next Steps

The next steps are: 

• finishing the manufacturing of the molds by mid-March,
• using them in plastic injection machines and make the first samples of each part,
• by the end or March, assembling ~20 Kellos using the final tooling and electronic boards.

These 20 Kellos are called Engineering Validation Samples and will be used to refine our manufacturing process (choose the color shade of each parts, their finishing, etc.)

After these steps, we'll run a few iterations and make more and more Kellos until mass production in May.

That's it for today. If you have any question on the mold manufacturing process, shoot in the comments!

Best,

The Kello Team.