RAVEN Update – October 13, 2023

RAVEN’s Are On The Water

The RAVEN’s set sail almost 2 weeks ago on their journey to our facilities in Houston. We are expecting them within the next couple of weeks. Once the ship arrives at the port, they’ll need to clear customs and then get loaded on a truck to us. Then, we will begin our QA process. We will be unboxing each machine and doing a full inspection to make sure everything is assembled and working properly. These machines do not have the electronics in them yet, as that development is still ongoing, but they will be ready and waiting for those boards to be installed as soon as they arrive.

Electronics Development

Our controller board development has encountered several delays that our engineers have had to tackle. Since the chip shortage forced us to switch to a totally new processor, our main controller and cut motor controller boards had to be completely redesigned. Then, we had to install the operating system and program it to talk to the components. This took time, but went fairly smoothly with only some minor hiccups getting communication established to the cut motor board. This process did, however, take about three weeks longer than our estimation. Since then, we’ve been chasing down noise issues, power routing problems and other unforeseen issues that have to be tracked down, understood, and then solved. We went through several iterations of the board designs to get these issues worked out. Then, once we were confident we had a final design, we sent it off for manufacturing only to be told a component we had specified was not available. At least it was a minor component, but it requires more testing to ensure everything is still working as expected. That is where our development is at the moment, but we are working long days and weekends to get the necessary testing done. These unexpected issues have completely trashed our estimated timeline. Our goal is to deliver the best product we can and don’t want to rush something out that isn’t ready. Be assured your RAVEN is coming, but we still have a ways to go. We will keep you posted on further developments.