Spintronics Progress Update #2: Surveys and Chain
almost 3 years ago – Sat, Jul 10, 2021 at 11:09:29 PM

Friends,

This will be a shorter update. Just a few things:

1. The most important thing is that today we'll send out the "survey" emails. Remember that it's not just a survey, but something you must fill out to complete your order. It's where you'll go to pay for shipping/taxes, to add a name to the puzzle book (for Megavolt/Gigavolt backers), and for Gigavolt backers, it notifies us to pass your information along to the warehouse to ship your Turing Tumble. You will also be able to purchase extra copies of the game and add-ons. For Gigavolt backers, your cards will be charged within a week of completing your survey. For all other backers, your cards will be charged once we get close to shipping. 

2. I thought I'd update you on the chain issue. If you remember from the last update, the chain segments were each about 0.1 mm too short and there was too much friction between the segments. It appears that the engineers at LongPack fixed both issues. They sent this video after tweaking the mold. It proves that the chain segments are the correct length now because they fit into the grooves of the larger sprockets (like the big one of the blue junction).

They also sent over a video where they pull one end of the chain. Remember last time, the chain didn't straighten out because there was too much friction between the segments. Now it's much, much better. 

It's not 100% perfect, and you can see they pull harder than I did in my test, but it still seems much better. Once I get a sample, I'll be able to tell if it's good enough.

3. The battery is coming along. The injection molds have been made, but there are still some issues LongPack is sorting out now. They actually sent me the list of three problems they're working on - it's wonderful to see them identifying and troubleshooting the issues on their own:

Problem #1:

Problem #2

Problem #3:

It's funny how a little hole could be missed like in problem #3, but that's how it is with CNC milling. The operator has to use software to generate "toolpaths" for every feature they want to cut out of the mold. (A toolpath is the path the cutting tool travels along as it cuts material away from the block of steel.) In this case, the operator forgot to tell the software to make a toolpath to cut away the little hole. I can totally understand that - it's a complicated part with an awful lot of little features. 

They think they'll have the problems sorted out by Monday.

4. The molds for the inductor have been designed. Now they're also in the queue to be made. I thought I'd show you an example of what LongPack sends to me once a mold has been designed. They send something called a "DFM report". DFM stands for Design for Manufacturing. The first page shows all the basic information like material, color, surface finish, etc.

Then it gets right into the mold design. The first thing is the gate location:

The "gate" is the little hole in the mold where the plastic is injected. When you look at an injection molded part, you can often find where the edge gate was because there's a little plastic sticking out. I check to make sure that any plastic sticking out won't interfere with the operation of the part. In this case, it's no problem - there's nothing nearby it could rub against and it's out of sight.

The next page shows the "parting line":

This is the line where the two halves of the mold come together. It's important because there can be a little ridge along the parting line as the two halves of the mold don't always come together perfectly. I need to be sure that the ridge won't affect it's operation. However, this is never a surprise because I design the parts to have a parting line along a certain path.

Next are the ejector pin locations:

"Ejector pins" are pins built into the mold that push parts out after they're cool. These are important because they leave little marks on the plastic. As an example, here you can see the ejector pin marks on the bottom of one of the junction parts:

I have to make sure that, if possible, the ejector pins are in places that aren't visible, because they don't look good.

And finally, they send any issues they have with "draft":

Draft is an angle you must put on all vertical faces so that you can get the part out of the mold. The picture below shows an example:

Typically you use something like a 2.5 degree angle. You can go as low as 1 degree, and sometimes you can even have no draft at all. The gears in the junction, for example, have no draft. That's one reason the junction was an especially difficult part to make.

Once I approve the DFM report, LongPack begins to make the injection molds, which is a surprisingly complicated and laborious process. So far, LongPack has sent over 66 of these DFM reports, with more to come.

That's all for today. I'm currently working hard on the puzzle books while LongPack continues to make progress on the injection molds. Don't forget to fill out the survey!

Thanks again!

Paul and the team at Upper Story

Spintronics Progress Update #1
almost 3 years ago – Mon, Jul 05, 2021 at 06:56:52 AM

Friends,

I've been excited for this! Progress updates! This is where it gets interesting. But before the interesting stuff, let me start by reminding you that we'll send out your "survey" next week. The survey will give you a link to a site where you will need to go to complete your order. There, you can do all the last bits, like picking a name to go in the book (for Megavolt and Gigavolt backers), paying for shipping/taxes, choosing your language, change your shipping address, upgrade your pledge, and other things.

Current State of Progress

Factory Selection

We're way ahead of where we were back when the Turing Tumble Kickstarter ended. We hadn't even chosen a factory to manufacture it by the time it ended. This time, we've already conducted a survey of factories all over the world, selected the best, and they've even finished making some of the molds.

Factories are not easy to find. You can't just google "toy manufacturer" and expect good results. I'm not quite sure why that is. Perhaps it's because most people learn of factories by word of mouth, and most factories are good at making things, not at marketing? Anyway, we found that the best way of finding good factories was to ask other toy manufacturers about the factories they like to use. 

We reached out to 25 different factories in the US, China, Cyprus, Vietnam, Hong Kong, India, Netherlands, and Mexico. For a point of comparison, we asked them for a quote on manufacturing Turing Tumble. The quotes that came back varied by a factor of 3-fold from lowest to highest! We cut the ones that were too high, the ones that didn't get back to us, and the ones that had poor communication. Five remained:

LongPack Games (Shanghai, CN)

Ningbo Eastar (Ningbo, CN)

Sun Vigor (Vietnam)

General Plastic Industries (Delhi, IN)

Ningbo Lijia (Ningbo, CN)

We asked each of them to send us samples of things they'd made in the past so we could see the quality of the parts. After that, and after interviewing them by video chat, we settled on LongPack Games. Again! The same manufacturer we used for Turing Tumble.

LongPack has grown a lot in the last 4 years. When we started working with them on Turing Tumble, they had about 50 employees and 1 engineer. Now they have over 100 employees and 6 engineers. They've also purchased more injection molding factories with better capabilities. But before we had them start making everything, we gave them one final test - we asked them to make injection molds for the two most difficult parts: the junction and the chain. The junction is difficult because it has tight tolerances and the planetary gears have to be nearly perfect to work smoothly while under load. 

The chain is difficult because each link has to be precisely the correct length. Just 0.1 mm too short or too long spells doom when you have 30 of them connected together - then the error is 30 x 0.1 mm, or 3 mm. The links also have to glide smoothly over each other without significant friction.

Before we launched the Kickstarter, we got our first sample in the mail. The junction was perfect! And on the first try! I was shocked.

The chain had two issues.  For one, each segment was a little too short compared to the Lego chain I used in the prototype.

The other issue is that there was too much friction between the chain segments. In the video below, you can see the new chain doesn't straighten out as easily as the Lego chain.

Even with the chain issues, we decided to go all in with LongPack. Not only did they do a great job, but they've repeatedly earned our trust over the years with Turing Tumble. Right before the Kickstarter began, we gave them the go-ahead to make the rest of the parts.

Packaging

Mackey Creative did such a great job with the packaging for Turing Tumble, we didn't hesitate to use them again for Spintronics. In another update, I'll show you the steps we went through to get to this point.

The box tops and sides are pretty much done, but there is something noticeably missing from the back of the boxes:

Like everything! We still have to finish the art for the back of the boxes.

But the insides of the boxes are finished. I made nice trays with cavities for each part. Here are the Act One and Act Two trays:

Artwork

We looked hard to find an artist for the comic story that reflected the style we were looking for. Eventually we decided on Aleksandar Zolotic. He did an outstanding job. We had a large amount of work for him: 60 pages of full-page color art. He got started in July of 2020 and finished in January of 2021. I'll devote an entire update to Aleksandar in the future. He's agreed to show you his process and he's in the process of making some pictures and video, which I think will be fascinating.

Puzzles

The puzzle books will be a little different from Turing Tumble. The concepts are generally too hard to just "figure out", so there are many short tutorials scattered through the puzzles that teach important concepts. It will also have a slightly shallower learning curve than Turing Tumble. All 60 of the Act One puzzles are drafted in, about 45 of the 60 Act Two puzzles, and 7 of the 10 Power Pack puzzles so far. This is actually what I'm working on right now. We're trying to finish the puzzle book as soon as possible so that we can get it translated before production begins.

What's Left

Before production can begin, we need to complete the following:

Manufacturing

• Battery (should be done any day now!)
• Transistor, resistor, ammeter, switch, and capacitor (factory is currently making injection molds)
• Tile, tile connector, connector tool, diode, and inductor (molds are currently being designed)

Package Art

• Act One back of box
• Act Two back of box
• Power Pack back of box
• Individual spintronic part box artwork
• Datasheets for each spintronic part
• Design the cardboard cartons

Puzzle books

• Finish the puzzles for Act Two and the Power Pack
• Play test the puzzles
• Put everything into its final form in the puzzle books

What's Next

The next big milestone will be completion of the spintronic battery. LongPack will be finished with it any day now and I'll be sure to tell you how it goes. That is, obviously, quite an important part to get right and there are an awful lot of pieces in it.

Thanks again, everyone! Not just for backing our project, but also for the kind words, ideas, and encouragement. It's fun and motivating to make this for you.

Paul and the team at Upper Story

Like an amplifier, you turned this project all the way up to eleven!
almost 3 years ago – Sun, Jun 20, 2021 at 03:18:04 AM

Friends,

Last night, Alyssa and I were up late, watching the final pledges come in, putting the final touches in the pledge manager, and thinking about what an incredible 30 days it's been. We're just amazed at the final number: $1,374,933. All we can say is thank you. You couldn't have given this project a more solid beginning. Over the coming months, we are going to work as hard as we can to make Spintronics the best it can be, and we'll take you along for the ride. There are a lot of interesting things coming up soon - for instance, the injection molds for the battery are being made right now! As soon as we get our first sample, I'll send pictures and video and tell you all about it.

Next steps

Kickstarter takes about two weeks to process payments and get all the data together. After that, you will be getting an email from us with a link to a "survey" where you can finalize your order. From there, you'll be able to:

• Pick a name for the book (for Megavolt and Gigavolt backers)
• Pay for shipping/taxes
• Choose your language (if not English)
• Upgrade your pledge or buy additional items
• Confirm your shipping address
• Get more diodes

For those at the Gigavolt level and those who add Turing Tumble in the survey, we'll ship them out as survey responses come in.

Of course, we'll send another update when it gets closer so you don't miss the survey.

Fun fact: If all of you backers took your spintronic batteries, put them in series, and pulled the string at the same time, you would generate over 100,000 spin volts, or enough to lift a car.

Once again, thank you!

Paul, Alyssa, and the team at Upper Story

The new diode prototype and our new name
almost 3 years ago – Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 11:49:45 PM

Friends,

It's amazing to see that we're past $1.1 M and well on our way to $1.2 M! In this update, I thought I'd tell you about two interesting things happening. First, the diode. In our last update, I showed a 3D rendering of the new design. The next step was to make high resolution 3D prints of the parts for a final test. If everything worked well, then it would be time to send the files to the factory to have injection molds made.

On Tuesday afternoon, I sent out the 3D files to i.materialise.com to have them printed. They are a Belgium-based company that I frequently use when I need high resolution 3D prints. They usually offer the lowest price I can find. I used to make my own high resolution prints on a Form 3 printer, but it's only a little more expensive to have i.materialise do it and it's far less messy and time-consuming. I'm giving them a shoutout because after sending them the files on Tuesday, I had the printed parts on my doorstep on Thursday - two days later! Usually that kind of thing takes weeks. Well, here it is (uncolored):

It works perfectly.

The next step is to write a little manufacturing guide to go along with the parts and send them off to the factory.

Upper Story

Now that we have two products, we decided to change our name from "Turing Tumble" to something...less confusing. We quickly learned that an especially challenging part of choosing a new name is finding one where the internet domain name isn't already taken (or is affordable enough to buy), but I think we managed to do alright.

It's probably best to start by giving a vision of how we view our brand and what makes us unique. So here it is: Toys are powerful. Our brains are built for playing with them - they're tangible and touchable. We can't help but play with them until we master them. In contrast, many of the subjects important in science/technology are abstract and intangible. You can't play with them at all, making it difficult to wrap our minds around them. For us, making educational toys means making toys that bring important, abstract concepts down into a tangible, relatable form that can be played with.

I think we also take a fundamentally different approach in the way we choose what products to develop. A lot of companies start by defining the specifications of the toy they want to make. Instead, we start by choosing the big problem in education that we want to solve. The advantage of our approach is that whatever products we make are guaranteed to solve an important problem and have value. The disadvantage is that it's risky. What if we work on a problem for years and never find a solution?

Well, eventually we settled on the name, "Upper Story". First off, the term "upper story" is a synonym for the brain. Also, the word "upper" suggests "premium", and the word "story" suggests relatability, and we have stories that go along with our toys to give them context. The name is warm, friendly, and fun, and it doesn't limit the scope of products we can make.

Upper Story Logo

Coming up with a name was tough, but coming up with a logo was even harder. With both Turing Tumble and Spintronics, we used a local company named Mackey Creative to design our box art. They are basically like Sterling Cooper from Mad Men, but for food packaging (weeell, maybe a more wholesome version of Sterling Cooper). They design for brands like Crystal Farms, Truvia, Old Home, PB2, and many more. Mackey isn't a big company, they're just really good at what they do, and they are surprisingly affordable. Chances are, you have some food packages in your home that they designed.

When we approached them with Turing Tumble, we weren't 100% sure they'd be the right fit, but they knocked it out of the park and they did the same for Spintronics.

We learned one of the most important parts of their job is the communication. Each time, they sat with us for a long time and asked us questions until they understood our vision. In the case of our company logo, they came back to us with a list of 9 rough ideas for phase one that cover a wide range. These rough logos were meant to spark ideas. We could take parts of them we like and combine them together, or we could decide on an entirely new direction. Now keep in mind that this was over a year ago. They're logos that are meant to match the Turing Tumble box because we didn't even have a Spintronics box at that time. Can you guess which one we liked the most?

We took a break after this for a good while and in the meantime, Mackey designed the Spintronics box, which set a new direction for the look of our products. A year later, we came back for phase 2 of our logo. Of the logos in phase 1, we especially liked the text of #9, how the 'R' ran into the 'R', and we liked the font - sophisticated, but warm. We asked for logos more like that, where the words made up more of the logo, not so much the images around it. They came back with this. Can you guess which one we liked the most?

It was #1. The font and the 'O' felt right, but they had no meaning. So we asked if they could modify the 'O' to represent something related to our brand without being too on the nose.  We also wanted a hint of a border to the logo that set it's boundaries. They came back with this. Can you guess which one we liked the most?

We fell in love with #10. It's such a clever suggestion of the brain without being too on the nose, it's simple, memorable, and fun. Alyssa felt like the five little marks above "UPPER" looked like watermelon seeds (one of those things you can't unsee), so they just finished making one last, final version and gave some examples of what it looks like in different places:

The form is fixed, but there's no fixed highlight color. It will change to match whatever it's on. And that's the story of how we came up with our brand new logo.

Thanks again. Just 4 days remaining!

Paul and the team at Turing Tu...

Paul and the team at Upper Story

The Million Dollar Diode
almost 3 years ago – Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 12:37:11 AM

Friends,

It's unbelievable to see that we've reached over $1 M and we're closing in fast on $1.1 M. I was planning to send an update yesterday, but I decided to finish up something else instead:

That's right - the million dollar diode! Our plan is to add these to the Kickstarter versions of Spintronics as a special thank you for your overwhelming support. We'll put one diode in Act One and one diode in Act Two. There are only four new parts in the diode, so I think we should be able to fit it in production without a significant delay. 

I know some of you were thinking about building rectifiers. For those of you who are getting Act One only, you'll be able to build a half-wave rectifier. For those of you getting both Act One and Act Two, you'll be able to build a full-wave rectifier. Here's a full-wave rectifier on the spintronics simulator:

So what the heck is a rectifier, anyway?

You might expect that power stations would send electricity to your house with a steady push. They don't! Instead they push, then pull, then push, then pull - back and forth, 60 times per second (in the US). It's called alternating current (AC). They do it that way because it's a more efficient way to transmit power long distances.

However, most things you plug into your outlets need a steady push of electrons in one direction. That's called direct current (DC). Rectifiers are clever little circuits that convert an alternating current (AC) to a direct current (DC). In the image above, I'm making an alternating current by dragging the red sprocket up and down with my cursor. The circuit converts the alternating current to a direct current that turns the gray resistor (on the right) in only one direction: clockwise. Full-wave rectifiers like this are the first step in the AC-DC converters you plug into your wall:

Ok, now one step further. Do you notice how the resistor doesn't turn smoothly? It goes fast-slow-fast-slow-fast-slow... One way to smooth that out is to add a filter capacitor. The capacitor acts like a reservoir, storing energy when there's extra and giving it up when there's not. You can see the resistor turns more smoothly in the image below:

In a week or two, I'll receive high-resolution 3D prints of the diode parts. If everything looks good, I'll send the plans off to the factory to have injection molds made.

Thanks again for your support!

Paul and the team at Turing Tumble