Scaling Production!

Intro

Hey, it's Cooper again! I'm so excited share with you our August 2025 update. We've been making great strides in responsibly scaling our production of Powercores and are almost ready to send out Wire Tools and Starter Kits!

Powercore V3

We're moving forward as planned with the Powercore V3. Machining has been improving significantly. Nick, our machinist and CEO, has been able to reduce cycle time for the Powercore V3 case from over 2 hours to under 30 minutes! This means we're going to be able fulfill quite a few more units per month before we even need to add another CNC machine.

The next 125 units are just about finished too. We're on track to ship our next batch in August! It's really neat to see so many Powercore cases lined up, ready for post processing. In the picture below, the left side units are ready for sand blasting and the right side units are ready for operation 2 in the CNC.

As a general thought on CNC machining for small to medium businesses, it really is incredible how scalable it is. If you're producing anything with moderate complexity and value, you should be able to scale the number of machines you can afford quite quickly. We've already blocked out the spot for a HAAS VF-4 next to our smaller Tormach 1100MX. This new machine will be a game changer for when we enter Betta Wire production.

We have a couple hundred boxes coming in for the next Powercores. New circuit boards should be here in the next week or two, allowing us to fulfill more units and to get the backlog of pre-orders cleared out.

Wire Tool Kits

Keeping in line with last month's update, we still expect to begin shipping Wire Tools and Starter Kits by Mid-August. We expect the first set of units to be more conservative in number to allow us to catch and issues with fulfillment scaling by the end of August.

We have a couple hundred units to get out there on the Wire Tool and Starter Kit side of things. We're super excited to get these out and we thank everyone who has waited patiently for doing so. The real roadblock here was the Powercore V3.

Improvements

We've got some minor changes to the Wire Tool this time around. One of the most important improvements we have made is a change to the wire guide type. We've moved to a much smaller wire guides and have added a second wire guide to the lower side of the tool, significantly decreasing wire wander.

We've revamped our idlers and energizer on the kit as well. We've moved away from the tungsten carbide block to a longer M5 fastener. This will allow users to replace their own energizer without needing to purchase a specialized part from us. The idlers have a much deeper groove, allowing for easier threading.

The waste spool has also been redesigned. This new spool features a quick release, self-tightening flange. This new flange removal allows tool-less disassembly and waste removal. We've found this to be super handy in our internal testing, and we think you will too!

The last change we've made (other than many small ones just cleaning things up) has been the switch to a slightly thinner endoskeleton. This will give us a much more consistent endoskeleton thickness. Some users reported issues with their previous endoskeletons due to fastener length and endoskeleton thickness variations. This should not be an issue now with an average of under 0.25mm in thickness variation on the new version.

Betta Wire

We hope to have a few Betta Wires running by the end of this month. We're finishing up the last updates required before we move into pilot run territory. Now that I'm finished with the updates to the Wire Tool and have production moving, I can focus my full time on the Betta. 

Similarly to last month's update, Nick has been working hard on the CAM and production choices for the Betta Wire.

We're finalizing a lot of the small changes we mentioned last month and will need to move on to kitting, sourcing, and packaging by the end of this month. This work can come from me specifically as the guys run the machine through its paces and validate function.

Closing Thoughts

We're having a lot of success using the Powercore V3 for cutting. That's even with difficult to machine materials like 1/2" thick AR500 steel, which we were able to machine even just with manual movements of the Wire Tool. Here's an image of some of our test cuts, working out the closed loop motion control with Powercore V3's PWM output.

One of the more fun parts I got to make recently was this extremely tiny aluminum gear. The gear is 3mm thick with a 0.3 module tooth. The wire being 0.3mm was definitely way too large and I should have run a 0.1mm for something this fine. Overall, I'm extremely pleased with the results we have been getting running the Wire Tool on a tiny ballscrew driven machine.

I think we're in a really good spot as far as fulfillment goes. We're scaling responsibly and are increasing the number of Powercores, Starter Kits, Wire Spools, and soon, Betta Wires we can send out.

It's taken a lot of mistakes and a lot of biting off more than we can chew, but it really feels like we've found our footing. I'm excited to push this harder and harder so we can change the way people make metal parts! I'm very grateful to all of you who have chosen to tag along for the ride. Until next time!

-Cooper