jdamaso111 wrote:
Looking at doing the x3 FT-17. Are there any good rules for ww1 style tabletop? Or would the bolt-action rules work with this?

 Swastakowey wrote:
I am new to Kickstarter, but last one I did I didnt have to pay until it ended, is that the case with this one?

 BrookM wrote:
And it's over with just a spot over the 20k marker. I have to say, not bad, not bad at all for a first time campaign. Now the waiting game starts.

Project Update #21: Surveys and Questions

Good Morning,

I hope this finds everyone well. Nearly all the surveys are in and we've been filling out the production schedule and matching it with our current inventory. By far the most popular model was the FT17 with the Rolls, A7V and MkV all tied for second.

We will start matching our inventory with orders. We are still designing the CA1 and MkIV molds and will watch how to handle orders that have those models as part of the pledge. Depending on how the molds progress in the next couple of weeks, we may ship those separately. We should see some of the basic pledges start to ship the week of the 15th.

Survey Questions

We debated the complexity of the survey at length and finally settled on the two basic questions you received. For the most part, we understood the answers and the pledge amounts matched the orders. There are about a dozen pledges that we will need to send emails to in order to confirm your expectations. Those should arrive before the end of the week.

ADD-ONs and Extras

Several people have requested adding to their pledges. We don't have a way to do that in kickstarter, but you can drop us a note to service@trenchworx.com and place an order. We can send you a paypal invoice. All additional tanks and add-ons (at the kickstarter prices) can be added to your order up until the pledge ships. There will be no additional shipping charge.

A few have asked for some of our other 3D printed models to be included with their shipments. You can do the same for any items you see on our site. Just send us a note at service@trenchworx.com stating what you would like and we will send you an invoice. There is no additional shipping charge for these items either.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to drop us a note through kickstarter or the service@trenchworx.com email address.

Thanks,

Dave

 BrookM wrote:
I don't foresee this one running into any problems any time soon in all honesty.

Good Morning,

I hope you've had a great week. This week, we have been very busy casting, sorting, organizing, ordering magnets and all the other stuff that goes on with a product launch.

The Schneider prototype model is on the printer. Nate finished the model Friday. It is a 20+ hour print job and should finish sometime Monday. There are some model pics in the email footer. I'm planning a future update describing our prototyping/printing process and will use this model as a basis. There will be a couple of easter eggs (or hidden pumpkins since it is almost Halloween) hiding in that update so stay tuned.

We finished the coaster designs and got those on order. They have a couple week delivery. The pics of the coasters are shown in the email header.

We received a lot of post-Kickstarter add-ons this week. I think I have responded to everyone, but if you did not receive an email from me, please send me another request at service@trenchworx.com. It has been a bit of an experience sorting through the 2000+ emails, comments and kickstarter updates in our inbox. I've found a few notes we missed! I have sent emails to those participants.

Lastly, I'm planning on sending updates every weekend after the dust of the prior week has settled and we can assess our progress. Please feel free to continue to comment and ask questions as they arise. Thanks again for your support.

Many Thanks,

Dave

Sometimes you have something cool to show off that just can't wait until the weekend. This was our first test print of the CA1. Now to make the molds and remove all those testy print lines...

Dave

Good Morning,

I hope everyone has had a great week. We are continuing to cast the products we have molds designed for and waiting for our coaster delivery in order to start some of the shipments. My apologies for lack of pictures in this update. I was traveling this week and didn't have time to get some good photos. There are a few interesting ones you might like at the end though.

This week and next, the backers with complex add-ons and swaps will start seeing some order confirmation emails from David P. We are cross checking our order board with the surveys to make sure we don't have any shipping mistakes. If you receive one of these emails please review the information and let us know if it is correct. If you do not receive an email, DO NOT WORRY, your order was simple enough we understood what to do! Concerning that topic, if we do make any shipping mistakes, we will always make it right in the end.

By next weekend, I plan to send all the add-on invoices from our trenchworx paypal account. If you still want some add-ons that weren't included with your pledge, please get your requests in this week. Once we ship your order, we won't be able to accommodate any add-ons to your pledge. You can send your request to service@trenchworx.com.

I am still working on a future update describing our 3D prototyping and printing process. I included a few pictures at the end of this update.

Finally, I participate in a local gaming group, Wasatch Front Historical Gaming Society, WFHGS for short. Matt Irsik runs the group, owns and maintains the website and also publishes a quarterly gaming magazine called Warning Order. In this issue, he asked me to provide a short interview about Trenchworx, 3D printing and our Tanks of WW1 kickstarter. Some of you may find it interesting. You can find the link to wfhgs.com here and the link to Warning Order #38 here. The .pdf download can be reached here. My interview starts on page 26. If you like to mag, please let Matt know. He puts a lot of effort into making it a great read.

Thanks again for your support, comments and questions. Have a great weekend and I hope all your teams win!

Dave


28mm MkV 3D printed prototype next to 6mm 3D printed prototypes


Schneider CA1 - 3D test prints - From Left to Right - 28mm, HO Scale, 15mm, 10mm and 6mm

Its an iterative process...



Good Morning,

I hope everyone is well. In this update I'll review our wire bending process for the MkV muffler. Bending a wire seems simple enough, but it takes a bit of experimentation to make repeatable product. Also, we have magnets, are nearly finished with the Mark V orders (over 150+!) and are still waiting on coasters in order to get some shipments started.

I will send the invoices this weekend for everyone's Add-Ons. This email will come from our service@trenchworx.com email if you have spam protection. When complete I will send a quick note that I've done that so everyone can double check me.

So, how do you bend wires?

We have several types of 3D printers at our disposal and from time to time have to create some funky bends in wire holders and baskets for our engineering applications. With this bit of knowledge, one of our student engineers sat down over the weekend and crafted this 6 step fixture using an Statasys FDM printer. It takes some effort to figure this stuff out and Ben ended up with a lot of different revisions (see header pic). Check out the Rev Level printed directly on the fixture. Have a look an let us know what you think.



Step 1 - Cut the wire



Step 2 - Bend #1



Step 2 - Bend #2



Step 2 - Bend #3



Step 2 - Bend #4



Step 2 - Bend #5



Step 7 - Verification Fixture

...And Bob's your uncle... a British MkV muffler

I hope everyone has a great weekend and all your teams win!

Thanks,

Dave



Holy Magnets Batman! Keep those away from your iphone.

Add-On invoices have been sent

Good Morning,

I hope this finds everyone well. We have completed sending all of the Add-On invoices this morning. If you are expecting one and did not receive yours check your spam folder and then send me an email at service@trenchworx.com.

We are still waiting on coasters to show up to begin the first shipments. The ETA is any day now. When the coasters are in hand we will start shipping the standard models and other basic orders. It will go slow at first as we figure out how to best conduct the activity. I'll send an update as soon as the first order ships.

Some of the orders are a little more complicated in that they have the CA1 and MkIV models included. It looks like the CA1 and MkIV models will begin production late this month and early the next with shipments for those models starting soon after.

Please let us know if you have any questions and have a great week.

Thanks!

Dave


Boxes of MkVs, A7Vs, Ft17s and Dice Holders

Shipments for Domestic Backers 9, 11, 24 &32!

Good Morning,

I hope this finds everyone well and you have all had a great week. This is the first of two updates this weekend about our project. This update concerns shipping. The second update concerns the overall project status and model availability.

Our coasters finally arrived and we are ready to start shipping what we have available! After reviewing all the Add-Ons, production capability, special requests, shipping destinations, order sizes, and so forth, we determined a final shipping strategy.

We will ship all orders COMPLETE and by BACKER # unless notified by the customer. We did this for a few of reasons...

- We were afraid that shipping partial orders may cause confusion for both us and the customer. If the customer got a partial order they might wonder where the rest of their items are. Many people don't have time to read the updates so they might not be aware that we were shipping partials.
- We were asked by several customers to ship their pledge complete when everything was available.
- The models that aren't quite ready to go, the CA1 and MkIV, only affect about 50 customers and if these fellows wanted a partial order shipped, we felt good about being able to manage any requests they have. We are expecting molded CA1s in the next couple of weeks as well.
- It helps our shipping and handling cost, although I'm not too concerned about that given the success of the kickstarter funding.
- We still expect to ship the last MkIV around the end of November so we are well within our time frames for the project. That will wrap up our first kickstarter and allow us to start selling the models on our website just in time for Christmas!

If you do want us to ship your order as a PARTIAL, please let us know via an email. We can do that for you if requested.

Concerning the shipping order, we are going to ship the Domestic orders via UPS for a couple of weeks to gain some experience with packaging, boxing, etc... We will start shipping the International orders (via US Postal Service) by the end of the month. The internationals are a little more complicated since we have some customs documentation to fill out and the addresses are in several different formats that we aren't as familiar with.

If you have any questions about your pledge or want a partial shipment when available, please drop us a note and we will let you get right back to you.

Thanks!

Dave


Stylish Trenchworx Coasters for your game table

Good Morning,

This is the second of two updates this weekend for our Kickstarter.

A few of you who know me, know that I'm an old operations guy who likes charts, statistics and one page project summaries. I thought this might be the perfect thing to share with you so that you could follow along with the development and production process for the kickstarter. As we go along the next several weeks, I'll send this info out with the update. The main thing you want to see is the information in the far right column going up and approaching 100%!

Dave, how do I read this????

First off, Green is good, Yellow is in process, Red is bad, and Blue is still in Design. Fortunately for us, most everything is Green and there are no Red concerns. The first column details the product code we are making. The second column is an overall model status. Next, we have a group of columns laying out what stage of design we are in. Finally, our order fulfillment status is displayed.

Most of these columns and lines are self explanatory, but the fulfillment details may be new to you. The first column in fulfillment is the current status describing whether we are we building or preparing to build. The second is the Build Rate which describes how fast we can knock out our remaining order requirements per day. The third is the Build Days to Complete which tells us how many days are left to complete all our order requirements at our current production rates. These are working days, not calendar days! That column is telling us we have about 4 good weeks of production left to fill our required orders. The Inventory column describes how much inventory we have of all the shipments remaining. The Orders Shipped details what percentage of shipments have left the building. I marked the first 5 orders as shipped although it will be Monday before they are in the post.

So the first thing you will note is the MkIV is still in the design phase. It is blue.

The second thing you might see are the yellow blocks notifying that we are building the mold masters for the FT alternate turret, Crossley model and the CA1. We had some issues with the FT alternate turret in that it tended to 'squish' in the mold. It also had a nasty parting line that needed fixing. Nate redesigned this little guy to be a multi-cavity mold similar to the comm turret (see below) and provided more strength in the silicone which eliminated the warpage. The Crossley had voids in the fenders and tires and we went through 3 iterations to get that guy working. The master we are printing today looks like it should work out great. And the CA1 mold is designed and will be built this week. We will probably end up with two revisions for that guy so I would expect good production off that model the last week of the month.


Comm Turret Sprue (uncut)

The next is the Orange block for the CA1. Orange means we are making our test shots with orange resin. This helps us retain our first product shots. It's nice to know where the first one is just because! Below are some examples of our first models we made 4 months ago.


MkV 1st Test Shot


Original 1st Test Shot of FT Tread Mold

The final item worth mentioning is the FT tank inventories. The FT tank was the very first mold we made and we were getting 'squished' defects and the mold itself had some design flaws. We could see the print lines in the sides of the model of the body as well as dulled details. We felt the edges and ridges should be much more crisp than we were getting.The parting lines on the tracks were also a bit too prominent for our tastes. Nate redesigned these molds to be a two cavity molds. He eliminated the parting lines on the tracks which made for a much cleaner model. We actually had about 75 completed units but after seeing the models off the new mold, we decided to scrap the old ones and only ship the perfected product off the new molds. What we are planning on doing is making several of the new 2-up molds for the FT. We will catch up that production very quickly so that we can continue to ship orders without delay. I included some pictures of the changes below. Most of these defects aren't even noticeable, but we knew, and that wasn't good enough for us!





I hope this gives everyone a good idea of how we are making our decisions and managing our first kick starter. It has definitely been a fun experience and we have learned more than we imagined when starting this project so many months ago. We are very excited to begin our first shipments next week.

Thanks and have a great weekend!

Dave

Good Morning,

I hope everyone had a great week.

The first batch of shipments have been sent and some even arrived. The Wargames and Railroads blog has even posted a quick review here. Thanks Kris!

Nate is almost done with the MkIV design. Have a look...





And lastly, I included some pictures of the sprues for the FT Alternate Turrets, the CA1 tracks and the Crossley Tender. Have a great weekend and I hope all your teams win.

Thanks!

Dave

Good Evening Everyone,

We have finished all the designs, all the molds and are molding all the codes! The team pulled their first few shots off the final MkIV and CA1 molds late last week and we got the parts assembled today for a quick photo shoot. The molds are producing fantastic parts. We are expecting to pull our final shot for this kickstarter in a couple of weeks with shipping completing soon after.

The team also figured out some exciting new process settings that provide a bit more 'pop' to the parts. Rather than go on and on, I'll let the pics below speak for themselves.

We have a holiday here in the States toward the end of the week, but will be back at it come Monday to finish this project up and get started on the next one. I hope all the locals have a great Turkey day and everyone else a great end to the week.

Dave

Good Afternoon,

I hope everyone had a great couple of weeks. We are entering the final week of production and shipping and we need to provide some details around the end of year logistics.

We expect to pull the last shots out of the molds this weekend or maybe Monday. We are planning to have everything shipped by next Wednesday afternoon. The last of the product has been waiting on Schnieders and Mark IVs, but we have plenty of molds running and are building those very quickly. After adding everything up, we will have built over 3,200 mold shots in a about 3 months. The most amazing thing to me is that many of those molds didn't even exist 4 months ago!

We are starting to receive feedback from many of the recipients and it has been overwhelmingly positive. There have been a couple of parts missing in some shipments, but we shipped replacements out for those pledges within a couple of days. As you receive your product, please compare to the packing slip and your expectations and let us know if anything is missing.

We do have 4 people monitoring our service@trenchworx.com emails so we do see any communication to us. The problem sometimes arises in that we have 4 people monitoring the email account and each of us thinks the other responded! We apologize if it takes more than a day to get back to you, but if you don't hear from us, please let us know and we will get your issue resolved quickly.

As for end of year logistics, we are shut down from the 18th to the 29th of December. However, we will be keeping an eye on emails and will work on their resolution when we return. We are planning on using the week after Christmas to fix any order issues, make some assembly instructions, tally all of the miscasts and build some inventory for product release in January.

Please let us know if you have any questions or comments. I'll leave you with a fresh picture of Paul's latest paint job.

Thanks and have a great weekend!

Dave


British Rolls Royce