December 31, 2024 – Odyssey Espresso

Good day Everybody,

We’ve needed to make just a few changes to our schedule whereas ready for our up to date chrome steel components to be accomplished and shipped. As of now, we have constructed 56 machines, however solely shipped 39 since our final replace on December 4th. There have been just a few minor points with meeting and QC, as outlined under, however we’ve addressed them and at the moment are working at a barely lowered capability because of the vacation season.

Early points with new components: 

The brand new fill tubes are barely too lengthy so we’ve needed to shave them down after which re-chamfer the sting. The bends are nonetheless not good. We created a fixture to help in meeting that permits us to suit the tube earlier than having the entire grouphead affixed to the machine. That is inflicting some leaks the place it’s taking extra adjustment to resolve. We now have ordered new fill tubes with these points corrected.

The brand new restrictor valves weren’t drilled out utterly so we needed to drill them out by hand within the store to make sure bleeding appropriately, as a result of throughout QC that is once we discover that bleeding is occurring too slowly.

We added a second Scace and Thermometer to assist velocity up our QC course of however began getting ~6C temperature variations between QC runs. This required us to do extra runs (typically greater than 5 per machine) till we had been assured within the outcomes. We opted to cease utilizing the brand new gadget till I used to be in a position to calibrate and discover the difficulty referring to a setting within the Thermometer gadget. 

We’ve shipped some batch 2 machines with the newly designed drip tray which sits centered underneath the group. Sadly these are nonetheless not the ultimate revision because the lip on them will not be excessive sufficient and the drip tray cowl slides off simply. We’ve determined to nonetheless ship these machines out since it isn’t important to the performance of the machine and can ship the brand new drip freed from cost as soon as we get them on the store the second week of January.

Random:

Enjoyable cameo within the newest Hoffman Video:

Can You Roast Espresso In An Airfryer?

With out spoiling the video, we’re happy to see James truly getting some fruit taste notes on this uniquely roasted espresso and calling the Argos a “very good lever machine”. 

We now have posters! These designs had been created 3 years in the past as a manner so as to add some related artwork to your espresso nook. We lastly acquired round to integrating with a 3rd get together achievement service that handles the whole lot for us, so these will normally ship inside 5 enterprise days straight from the printer. 

https://www.odysseyespresso.com/store/argos-art-deco-poster-light-version 

https://www.odysseyespresso.com/store/argos-art-deco-poster-dark-version

Excellent Points:

We’re nonetheless working to find out the foundation explanation for our fogging boiler gauges. We predict that tolerances within the boiler cap design and gauge internals might trigger some gauges to not compress the o-ring as a lot as needed which can enable some steam to flee and get via the glue that holds the quilt to the gauge physique.

We’re persevering with to check screw modifications and thicker o-rings. Sadly, it’s a time consuming course of as we should individually carry every gauge as much as temperature and stress on a machine to finest replicate the state of affairs. 

With the brand new 3d printed jig that we offered to our heating component provider, they’re now in a position to get every half made made inside the tolerances we have to enable for a lot simpler meeting. We must always obtain these items in just a few weeks which is able to velocity up considered one of our extra labor intensive sub meeting builds. 

Construct Price:

William and I spent a while doing useful resource planning. Now that we’re again right into a groove with constructing machines, we want up to date time estimates for every stage of the meeting course of.

We’re presently hitting our preliminary ramp up goal of 4 machines shipped per day. As soon as we will constantly handle this for one more week, we’ll enhance our goal to five machines per day. If no points come up, we’ll add one other full time worker with the purpose of 6 per day. 

The extra machines we construct and ship per day, the extra useful resource shuffling we’ll must do with our workers who’re comfortably cross educated between constructing and QC or constructing and packaging.

That is an thrilling time within the manufacturing course of the place we’re in a position to actually begin engaged on optimizing our workflow to have a self sustaining operation that requires much less oversight and day after day downside fixing. 

As we attain these targets, we’ll work on maintaining everybody up to date extra incessantly so you possibly can observe the progress with us.

Future Planning:
We’ve spent the previous month updating and ordering our subsequent batch of components. Timing on this was important as a result of we wished to ensure we constructed sufficient batch 2 machines to verify our earlier design adjustments and provider high quality opinions whereas additionally balancing lead time.

With stock orders locked in now, we’ve acquired loads of room for delays across the 3 week Chinese language New Yr vacation in Jan/Feb to obtain components by early March. By having simply completed our high quality opinions in China, and sustaining constant communication, we’re assured that we’re aligned with the suppliers on expectations shifting ahead.

2024 Recap:
As we replicate on this previous yr, we’re extremely happy with the expansion we’ve achieved as a small enterprise. This journey wouldn’t have been attainable with out the unwavering help and persistence of everybody concerned!

Ross made the daring determination to go away his engineering profession and dedicate himself absolutely to rising the enterprise. We’ve since expanded to a staff of 14 gifted full-time, part-time, and contract workers—every of whom performs a significant function in our success. As we proceed to evolve, we stay dedicated to studying, adapting, and refining our workflow to create a office that’s each pleasing and productive, whereas delivering distinctive merchandise and customer support.