Spintronics Progress Update #3: The Battery is Complete!
almost 5 years ago – Fri, Aug 06, 2021 at 04:06:09 AM

Friends,

First, a quick reminder - if you haven't already, please fill out your survey. You need to complete it to receive your game. If you haven't received an email with a link to your survey, please reach out to us at [email protected] and we'll get you set up.

Fortunately, things are still coming along with surprisingly few problems! I've spent the majority of my time the last few weeks working on the puzzle books, but in this update, I thought I'd cover progress that's been made in manufacturing. I'll start with the big one: the battery.

The Battery

While the junction was the most difficult to produce because of the high precision required, the battery is by far the most complicated. With 48 parts that all have to work correctly, significant stress placed on parts by the spring, and a circuit breaker mechanism that slams it to a halt when it gets going too fast, I figured the first sample of the injection molded battery would have a number of problems to fix. I just hoped I wouldn't have to redesign anything and have molds remade.

Well, two and a half weeks ago, the first sample arrived in the mail. I opened it up and...wow, it looked great! The colors weren't quite right (the copper and gold colors are kind of drab, and just for this sample, they used copper everywhere it was supposed to be silver), but it still looked great!

Then I tried it and...it WORKED! It wound up perfectly, the circuit breaker mechanism engaged at just the right speed, nothing seemed weak or warped, it was great! Upon closer look, I found some small problems, but they were mostly in how it was assembled, which is easy to fix. There's only one little part on the inside that needs to be adjusted:

That little part in the picture needs to be 0.5 mm shorter. As it is, the little one-way ratchet mechanism doesn't engage all the way in the gear above it. It's not that that part was made poorly, it's just that small errors in the heights of the other parts in the stack added up, and the problem can be fixed by shaving off 0.5 mm from that part. 

The next day, I 3D printed a shorter version of that part, reassembled the motor correctly, and did some tests with it. First, I pulled the string and let it go a whole bunch of times to make sure the circuit breaker mechanism is sturdy.

It didn't show any signs of wear after an awful lot of that.

Then I did a test to determine the battery's voltage, capacity, and noise. Voltage is how hard it pushes. You can see the voltage displayed by the capacitor/voltmeter on the bottom left of the video below. The capacity can be determined by how much chain it's able to push on a single charge. A battery's capacity is usually given in units of amp-hours (Ah). That is, how fast the chain is moving (amps, A) multiplied by how long it's able to move that fast (hours, h). Noise is how much the battery stutters as it turns. If the gears don't mesh quite right or there's significant friction inside the motor, you see the voltmeter wiggle and bounce up and down a lot. My first prototypes of the battery were very noisy.

But everything looks excellent here! There's virtually no noise and the capacity comes out to about 0.0004 Ah (for those checking my calculations, this resistor is actually about 1260 ohms). The voltage is slightly lower - I think we'll call it a 6 V battery instead of a 7 V battery. That's no matter - the voltage can easily be stepped up or down with the spintronic parts. What really matters is the battery's capacity.

To summarize, the battery is essentially complete, with a couple minor issues left to work out. In terms of the larger picture, I've learned that Spintronics isn't too complicated. As I was prototyping the parts, I kept thinking to myself, "This is complicated. Will anyone be able to manufacture it?" The answer is a resounding "Yes!", and I could make even more complicated things in the future. :)

Chain

Yesterday I received a new sample of the chain. Note that it's not the correct color - they made it silver for prototyping, but it will be a very dark metallic gray in production.

LongPack corrected the length problem and the friction problem - it feels pretty good! But now it's clear that there are a couple of other issues:

1. The gap in the middle is too narrow. It's pretty far off. The chain doesn't fully engage because it can't fit all the way over the sprockets.

2. The snap isn't formed right. There's a dent in each snap that's hard to see with your eyes, but you can see it with a microscope:

The dents cause a number of small issues, but I'm betting they'll be able to fix them without too much trouble.

One unexpected property of the new chain is that it's 22% heavier than the Lego chain. A small part of that comes from a difference in design (it has 2% more material), but mostly it's because it's made of POM plastic rather than ABS. In the video below, you can see the Lego chain floats in sugar water, but the new POM chain sinks.

I used POM because it's a very slippery plastic, so it should have less resistance, but I didn't consider the extra density. Ideally, you'd want the chain to have zero mass so that it doesn't add inductance to the circuit, but then again, I'd rather have stray inductance than stray resistance.

Challenges

As LongPack continues to cut out new injection molds, there are two issues we're in the middle of trying to resolve. One has to do with the ammeter. The little disc with grooves on top (sort of like a record) may be challenging for the injection mold factory to cut out.

It has very, very small features. There are 600 grooves around the perimeter and they're each only 15 micrometers tall (0.015 mm).

LongPack asked to reduce the number of bumps and make them 50 micrometers taller. The problem with less bumps is that the pitch of sound gets too low and the volume drops off. The problem with taller bumps is that the needle doesn't sink into the grooves anymore. It just slaps the edge of each groove as it skips over the top of them. When it does that, it sounds more like random noise than a tone. So the dimensions need to be pretty close to what I sent them. Fortunately, they they just sent a message today to say that they think have a way to do it.

The second challenge has to do with the tiles:

The metal on top turned out to be more expensive than originally quoted. They discovered that their quote from the sheet metal factory wasn't for six tiles, but for one. So we're both trying to figure out ways to make this part cheaper as it's surprisingly expensive.

One way they figured out is to use tin-coated steel instead of galvanized steel. That was a good idea - galvanized steel has a thin coating of zinc on the surface. It gives it that characteristic "crystalized" look that you see on playground equipment and other outdoor metal that's unpainted. Tin-coated steel is less expensive and looks a little nicer. It doesn't stand up to outdoor use as well, but that shouldn't be a problem for us.

The tin-coated steel in the image is all scuffed up, but fortunately it isn't easy to scuff like that. I tried a lot of things to make more scuffs, and really only sandpaper could do it, so I'm not sure how it happened. LongPack said it wouldn't be that way in production.

They also want to make the metal significantly thinner. That causes two problems: (1) the magnetic force holding parts to the surface isn't as strong and (2) the metal bends easier - it could potentially bend upward and expose a sharp edge. I'm testing the first problem - it seems like the magnetic force is still strong enough, but I'm going to have to change the tile design to account for the second problem. We'll need two ways to hold down the metal so we can be sure it never bends upward to expose a sharp edge. 

We'll do it like this:

We'll bend the edges of the metal down and they'll snap into the plastic base. The edges will be hidden in pockets underneath. Second, we'll use double-sided tissue tape to hold the metal down tight. I just finished a prototype today. It works great and it feels higher quality.

What's Next

The injection molds are currently in the process of being made for all of the parts except the tiles and the diodes. The molds for the diodes are a little further along - they're designing them now. Now that the tile design is complete, they'll begin designing molds for that, too. We should receive injection molded samples of some other spintronic parts in the next couple weeks.

I'm ecstatic with how things are turning out. Not just the physical part of it - the puzzle books, too! (I'll leave that for a future update.) Thanks so much for supporting Spintronics! It's exciting to see it come together.

Paul and the team at Upper Story

Spintronics Progress Update #2: Surveys and Chain
almost 5 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 5 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 5 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
about 5 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