First the bad news:  Late last year we expended much time and effort to locate a company able to do the quality finish work we required to complete the Robot's torso.  Our desire was to increase our production rate without decreasing quality.  The company selected did an outstanding job.  The bad news is that early this year they experienced other issues and were no longer available to do the work.  This resulted in a halt in production until we could decide how best to proceed.

The good news is we have moved this labor intensive operation back in house.  We retooled our torso mold and created some innovations that reduce the finishing labor considerably.  Our production rate should settle down now at about 30-40 Robots per year.  That's a bit short of our goal of 50 per year but enables us to ensure the quality remains at an excellent level and the work gets done "on time".  We also decided that we will construct Robots four at a time (vs 10 at time as we did for the first 20).  In addition to retooling the torso mold, we have changed the shop layout to take advantage of the space gained from the batch size reduction.  These changes (which were completed in March) have allowed us to produce our most recent batch of four Robots in only 6 weeks.  We hope to continue at this rate and complete the remaining 125 Robots over the next 3-4 years.

As the Robots are completed we will continue to send out email notices.  All 150 Robots have already been reserved, but occasionally the reserve customer is not able or ready to purchase when their Robot is finished.  Those Robots are then offered to everyone on a first come, first served basis. 

We sincerely hope to complete all of the planned 150 Robots and thank you for your continued patience and understanding of this labor intensive process.

Mike

Miscellaneous photos of the new shop layout, etc.  Also a couple shots from the Starfest convention held last month in Denver.  We displayed our serial number 001 Robot, it was a big hit!