Manufacturing, Packaging, and Shipping Updates
over 6 years ago – Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 10:14:46 PM

Hi Backers,

I have a couple of updates as well as some more documentation of some of the many details in creating a real thing.

Under Pressure

Last update covered a bunch of the manufacturing process, but I didn't get to show the machine actually cutting the Troxes. The machine being used to cut the Troxes is a Bruno press which applies roughly 34 tonnes of pressure onto the paper to both cut and score the pieces at the same time. Below is the machine in action, passing the paper from right to left, cutting isn't actually visible, so we get the before and after.

Pulling 150,000 pieces by hand

For the past two weeks, the die-cut pieces have been pulled away from the scrap paper, of which there is not a lot of waste, since the Troxes tesselate so closely together. This process has been slow and tedious and lucky for me, I have an amazing hardworking team that is getting the job done. This process has taken longer than expected, which is often not a shock, but it did mean that stripped Troxes didn't arrive to the factory until this week, where they await packaging with instructions.

When the Troxes arrived at DATAGRAPHIC's warehouse, they are in big boxes arranged by color. There are 5 different colors and many of you are getting a variety of colors, more on that process later.

Thinking inside of the box

To have Troxes packaged the way I imagine, I need to communicate exactly what I am thinking. I have wanted super clean packaging from the start and this last week, our custom made clear boxes arrived. They are the only part of Troxes that are made in China, and they look stunning. The clear box's goal is to disappear and let the forms of the Troxes be front and center. Since the box is a tight fit, it feels like a really nice solid object when in the hand. Below is a diagram I created to show how a stack of 60 pieces gets inserted into the clear box, and then how each of the different reward tiers gets placed into their own custom sized mailers. Yup, I decided that the box that the Troxes are mailed in should fit the packages precisely, so when they arrive, there shouldn't be any need for filler in the packaging, just solid Troxes.

Everybody do the C-M-Y-K

Ending a Kickstarter update with a YMCA singalong for color accuracy is most likely a first here. Thanks for joining in :) Another aspect of creating Troxes is printing the instructions. It has been a long road to get to the point of deciding the fewest amount of instructions necessary to communicate how to make a Trox and I feel pretty good about where I have landed. I sent final artwork to DATAGRAPHIC and then meticulously updated my files to make sure my color values were accurate and separated such that the printer won't have any unwanted mixing of colors. The gif below demonstrates checking every layer, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black to print the final folded instructions booklet. 

When will Troxes Ship?

Our aim is to ship in September, and we might make that just by the hair on my chin (which if you've seen my chin, that isn't the highest of odds). More likely, Troxes will be leaving my hands in the first week of October. A lot of pieces are coming together to get Troxes boxed and assembled and ultimately, I didn't want to push any part of the process in a way that could allow for shoddy work. Each piece of the process takes its time and has proven to come out with stellar results when given the appropriate time. Move38 is moving into our new office on October 1st, and I believe the first project will be pick'n'packing Troxes and shipping them right to your doorstep.

There is one last thing that I have to be completely transparent about. The first packs of Troxes will be boxed and ready in a week and a half, but will take another week or two longer to be shipped to you. I will be at the World Makers Faire in NYC on September 23 & 24 and have planned to bring 300 packages of Troxes to the event for their first retail ever. With any luck, we'll sell out of the packs I bring. I need some help on site in NYC, so if you are a backer and would like to be involved in the premier of Troxes at the Maker Faire, I would love your help, and it might be possible to pull some of your boxes for in hand delivery that day as well. Feel free to get in contact with me here or at [email protected].

Sending all my best and looking forward to sharing my next update about final instruction prints as well as the shipping process.

forever troxin',

Jonathan

Designed, Manufactured, and really Made in New York
over 6 years ago – Sat, Sep 02, 2017 at 05:33:44 PM

Hi Backers,

About 2 weeks ago, Troxes hit the presses, and in short, they are looking amazing! To my surprise and delight, we are making Troxes right in the heart of New York City. The company I have been closely working with, DATAGRAPHIC, found some time on machines in the city so I could document the process easily. Below is a short summary of my trip with photos of the process in action.

A few items to address quickly

1) If you haven't filled out the Backer Kit Survey, please make sure you do so now. It is officially September and we'll be shipping this month :) (if you have any questions about this, feel free to ask me directly, or reach out to the Backer Kit support team, they are very friendly.

2) Boxes for packaging Troxes will be arriving September 5th, and I'll be meeting with DATAGRAPHIC to walk through the packaging process to allow for time studies to take place. Time studies allow DATAGRAPHIC to know what it costs them to have an employee package 60 Troxes in each box.

3) Instructions and package inserts will start printing once I have my final artwork, fingers crossed that is mid-next week. DATAGRAPHIC has already created the estimates for the folding and packing of those items and can turn around that job in 6 business days.

Manufacturing Visit

The manufacturing process is one of truly magnificent and magical powers that humanity has developed over thousands of years. Modern day manufacturing is a marvel in its own right, but the thing that constantly amazes me is how much it all depends on people interacting with one another, to accomplish a shared goal. Communication is key, and DATAGRAPHIC and I have been able to have close communication about how to accomplish tight tolerances and a quality that feels as good in the hand as it looks.

Moreover, processes that seem like they would be automated by machinery are often carried out by people, due to time, budget, or simply fidelity constraints. In this case, Lorenzo is building up a platform for Troxes to properly score. Incredibly thin layers of carbon paper show the indentations of the die and by cutting around the score locations, the machine can create both the score and the cut in a single pass. Making sure that the machine makes all of the pieces come out the same requires an incredible amount of fine tuning. This stage of the process is called the Make Ready, and the idea is that once the job is made ready, it can run. Often times a make ready can take an hour or two. In the case of Troxes, our Make Ready spanned 3 days. I know that this is not a drop in the bucket for everyone making Troxes, and their commitment to quality is the reason I am working with them.

I could write quite a bit on this topic, and so I'll happily share more soon, but I think it only appropriate that I get to the images and share the process visually. Here we go!

There is more documentation to come, and believe it or not, I had to catch a flight shortly after visiting the manufacturer, so we set specific requirements for the quality of the Troxes before they could approve and run all 150,000 pieces. On the day I visited, the pieces still had a lot of tiny adjustments to be made, you can see here just how much more manual labor was being done.

Next time I post photos, we'll be looking at the final batch together and starting to package them to ship your way. I can tell you that the packaging will proudly wear this symbol for Made in NY.

 For those of you that wanted some iOS, Android, Mac, PC desktop images, you can download them here!

Looking forward to sharing more soon, and thanks for all of your support along the way.

Speaking of support, if you are looking for a way to give or help with those affected by the catastrophic events in Houston, Texas, here is a nice list of ways that help that might be even more directed and effective than the Red Cross donation (which is typically the most visible).

with love and troxes,

Jonathan

Cutting, Stripping, and getting Sticky wit' it
over 6 years ago – Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 07:09:30 PM

Hey Backers,

Lot’s of news, progress, and updates. (and apparently some Will Smith title punning)

Some of my closest friends know that I am the world’s slowest eater, but they also know that the kind of consideration I put into every bite, is the kind of consideration I put into every product.

Stop the presses…Uh, I mean, start the presses

This upcoming week, I’ll get to witness the first press of the 12-UP Troxes die and give a Gladiator-like thumbs up or thumbs down. First, I should express, that I couldn’t be more excited to be working with DATAGRAPHIC, a company that has printed and produced materials of such high quality for other artists, designers, and friends in the past. To my delight, the cutting process will happen in Manhattan. That's right New York City and so I’ll be there with camera in hand, ready to film the process. Fingers crossed the presses are running on Wednesday, August 16th, I’ll be looking forward to sharing footage next week.

A little bit ‘bout stripping

No, I didn’t get a new job to support this endeavor, stripping is how the die-cut pieces get removed from all of the excess material that surrounds them. When I send in a die design, it doesn’t contain any information on how to strip the many pieces from the material and so DATAGRAPHIC generates the final die layout with cut rule, specifically designed to help in the stripping process. You can see in the image below just how much cutting will happen with every single press of the die. 

One aspect we need to be careful of is if there are too many cut rules in a single area, the die can act like a bed of needles, distributing all of the force evenly across the paper and resulting in subpar cuts, hopefully that will not be the case.

Making Troxes Stick

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to play around with making iMessage stickers, and the fun thing about the development process for stickers is that you can just use them right away. I started responding to friends messages with Troxes and got some confused, if not excited looks. Here are a couple of screenshots of what that looks like. Would you like to use a Troxes sticker pack on your device? Care for some background images for your phone or computer to remind you about the amazing things you will build without your phone or computer?

This is a good time for me to remind everyone that there are just a few more weeks to pre-order Troxes at the same pre-retail prices for individual packs. When we start shipping next month, I have a feeling your neighbors are gonna be pretty jelly of your paper creations, so might as well let them in on the party now :)

Behind the scenes stats

You might have wondered how many Troxes or sub-trox pieces are being cut, and the answer is a whopping 150,000 pieces. That’s a lot. 12 pieces per sheet, 12,500 sheets of paper, 60 per box, 2500 boxes. Before orders were placed, I needed to specify the amount for each color of paper, and the winner is… drumroll please… Royal Blue :) The other colors performed pretty evenly, although orange was lagging behind. I am kind of surprised by this, because the orange in person is truly brilliant… perhaps I’ll start calling it Brilliant Orange to boost interest.

More to come soon!

With Ticky Tacky,

Jonathan

BackerKit Surveys, Lefty v. Righty, Shockingly Cool Troxes
almost 7 years ago – Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 07:48:07 PM

Hi Backers,

 

First things first

The ball is rolling with our manufacturer and we need to start ordering our paper stock ASAP. That’s where the BackerKit Surveys come in handy. You should get an email soon with your BackerKit Survey. The survey is straight-forward, asking you to select the colors for your Troxes kits and enter your shipping address (be sure to put your phone number if international shipping). You can even add additional packs of Troxes. 

If you backed for the Starter Kit, you’ll be selecting a single color. If you backed for the Bucky Apprentice Kit, you’ll select colors for all 10 of your packs. The survey will look a little something like this:

It’s important to respond to your survey as quickly as you can since we need this information to fulfill your rewards.

You don’t need to create a BackerKit account to fill out your survey. When you receive the email with the survey, click the survey link to respond. Answer the questions about your reward preferences, provide shipping information, and purchase add-on items if you like. You don’t have access to this survey link yet, but it will be available soon via email!

After you respond to your survey, you can go back later and change your responses at any time before we close the surveys and get our final counts. If you need to review your information or pledge status, you can return to your survey by clicking the link in your survey email or requesting your survey link under "Lost your survey?" on our BackerKit project page at https://troxes.backerkit.com.

If you used your Facebook credentials to log in to your Kickstarter account, the BackerKit survey is sent to the email address you use for your Facebook account. If you have another email address that you prefer to use, please contact support at https://troxes.backerkit.com/faq

Is that Trox a Top or a Bottom?

Last week, I proposed a solution to the top vs bottom problem with Troxes, or I like to say, lefty vs righty; however, I didn’t quite explain what that issue is, so I have included a short video here of me explaining this issue. Watching beta testers create Troxes is almost like flipping a coin heads or tails for which way they fold them, so having an indicator to differentiate sides will make everyone's lives a little easier while making Troxes.

To fix the issue, I placed the simple logotype on the pieces, and received some helpful responses. In prototyping the spot gloss, it became clear that having the logotype at the size I had posted and the location felt tacky. The Troxes felt more like a piece of advertising than it did a beautiful object to keep on your desk. While the clear logotype isn’t as bold as a bright color of paint, it did become overwhelming when folded together. I created a variety of prototypes painting on gloss coat of type and symbols, and found that having the specific logotype for Troxes in Gotham, a font that speaks to geometry and social progress, is well suited, just needed some refinement and a new location.   

Resizing the logotype and moving it to the smallest fold is a simple change. It retains its function as a top indicator and tucks neatly to the inside of the connector when folded. The logotype can be seen under close inspection, but doesn’t take away from the smooth clean exterior aesthetic. Lastly, the logotype can serve as one more element of friction is holding the Troxes interconnected. The real test for this will be when samples are off the presses, but I think this adds one more form & function perk. 

Shockingly Different by Design

Last week, I was a guest designer at Cooper Hewitt, the National Design Museum’s summer camp. During their Bits & Bots workshop, I decided to share Troxes. to make it a little more relevant to the robotics theme, I let them create conductive Troxes with aluminum foil. That combined with a Makey Makey, allowed them to play games and perform a DJ set for the class. No kids were shocked in the process. 

To say the workshop was well received is an understatement, as kids asked how they could get Troxes, when they would be available… one exclaimed “You mean I can get these for Christmas!?!” The museum let me know that this was by far and away the best visit they’ve had of this kind and surely enough, I've already been invited back. Thanks to your help, I was able to supply the class with enough Troxes for the workshop, and had great content to share. And thanks to the class, I have some notes to update my instructions, making Troxes more accessible to all you backers.

One Last Thing

While it is a bit early for some of your calendars, I found out that I'll have a station at this years World Maker Faire in NYC on September 23+24 and would love to see you all there. If you are in the NY area and would like to help out at the Troxes table, reach out, I would love the spare hands. Last year, a little known fact is that I traded a single Trox for 2 hamburgers! Just saying, these little puppies are pretty hot on the Maker Faire black market :)

That's it for now, looking forward to sharing more soon!

with Troxes and Kisses,

Jonathan

Scaling Manufacturing, Backerkit, Branding and a Surprise
almost 7 years ago – Sat, Jul 08, 2017 at 12:37:03 AM

Hi Backers,

It’s been a little while since my last update, in fact, I last told you that I’d be off grid for a couple of days, and by now, you might believe it if I said I have decided to dedicate my life to furniture design in the forest… not true. But maybe a little too close for comfort :). The time off-grid was amazing, in fact, my partner and I spent time hiking, playing board games, and putting together a jigsaw puzzle, a first for me in many years. I couldn’t advocate stronger for such a vacation, especially if you find yourself residing in a fast-paced, dense city. But I’m not here to give life advice. At least, not today. I am writing to give updates on Troxes, the crazy alternative to square building blocks, that you are helping me bring to life.

Design Across Scales

As a software developer, it is easy to believe that when you design and realize one of something, that it could exist one hundred, one thousand, or one million times. As a hardware designer, I know that each of these thresholds provides different challenges. For example, before launching the Troxes campaign, I had fabricated thousands of Troxes in a dozen ways: my own personal die-cutter, laser cutter, and even a “small" batch run of five-thousand pieces with my beloved manufacturer DATAGRAPHIC. Each of these processes present their own hurdles, and both myself and DATAGRAPHIC do our best to estimate the costs for fabricating Troxes, with tighter margins than most products, because the idea is to put something unique into the world that we are all proud of.

When cutting a single die, the calibration process is significantly simpler than for dies with multiple pieces. You can imagine that if the pressure isn’t distributed perfectly, that one part of the die could cut and crease too deep or too shallow. Only through fine-tuning and a careful eye can DATAGRAPHIC deliver on the kind of precision I request for Troxes.

On the Flip Side

I have been trying to find the most elegant way to solve the most common flub(technical term) while building Troxes. The flub, or common mistake, is that it is difficult to know the top from the bottom of each piece. This means that folding each of your pieces in different directions could result in “left-handed” and “right-handed” Troxes that don’t fit together. How do you think I propose to solve this issue? 

Other building blocks manufacturers have figured out that placing their seal of approval on their building blocks makes them feel more authentic. If you had asked me if LEGO wrote LEGO on their bricks a couple of months ago, I would have said, no way, that’s crazy, they are just iconic LEGO bricks, but upon closer inspection, sure enough, every LEGO brand lego brick has their logotype embossed on each dimple.

While branding for branding sake doesn’t fit my design tastes, there is something that feels nice about hinting authenticity while providing a functional role as well. Brands too frequently force themselves on us, and I don’t want to be that. I do however, want to build a brand that is recognized for its quality. To that effect, DATAGRAPHIC and I came up with a simple Spot-Gloss logo. It will show up mostly when reflecting light and looks quite elegant. This might prove to be too expensive down the road, but for my initial run, it feels like a nice way to say, “hey there, I’m authentic". I welcome your thoughts, on the matter, since there wasn’t any branding on Troxes in the video or photos, I want to make sure that the branding only makes your product more personal, more authentic, and makes it something you are proud to show off. (Plus, who doesn’t like shiny things :)

BackerKit to the Future

If this isn’t your first Kickstarter, you have most likely backed a project that has used BackerKit’s services and that’s for a good reason. They help make the whole process run smoother and I’m happy to say that I am working with them to make sure Troxes is well managed, and easy to deliver on time. Another nice feature of BackerKit is that I can open up Troxes for Pre-Order, that way some of the folks that missed the Kickstarter boat can get in and receive their shipments shortly after y’all get yours. Right now the store is limited to the single pack deal.

Going for the Gold

Among many things, Kickstarter has provided an incredibly supportive community and from my multiple campaigns, I have made so many friends who launch their products in the same way. Kickstarter has invited a number of them back to relaunch their campaigns, in most cases with a nice update, and here are a couple I think you should know about.

 

You might recognize half of this design duo, CW&T, since Che-Wei agreed to make an enormous Troxes creation with me for my Kickstarter Video. They also happen to be the creators of my favorite pen, the last one I should ever own. They decided to release Pen Type-B in Titanium, making it lighter and stronger than the original Pen Type-B. Simply put, it feels as good as it looks.

The Public Radio. In a day and age of way too much interface clutter, The Public Radio stands out as a brilliant example of clean design and UX brilliance. Watching the way people use a radio and then designing a radio just for that takes incredible insight. When I tell friends I bought a radio in a mason jar that is tuned to only a single station, they cough “hipster.” But when they turn the radio on themselves, there is no greater feeling than the simple satisfaction of getting exactly what you need, a no clutter interface. Check out the video, can you spot Troxes first Kickstarter cameo? :)

Needless to say, these projects make for incredible gifts and are worth checking out or sharing before they sell out!

Oooh, I almost forgot the best part, the surprise!

Fill'r to the Top!

The momentum for the Troxes campaign was awesome and we managed to surpass a number of Stretch goal tiers. I know that so many of you simply wanted more Troxes, and you're getting them. Each pack will now contain 60 pieces. The math works out really nicely since you can make 15 Tetras, 7 Octas, or 3 Icosa Troxes. It is also nice to have some practice pieces when learning how to make your first one.

I look forward to sharing more of the packaging and manufacturing process soon, but that's all for now! 

Trox ya' later

Jonathan