T1 Pictures, New App Preview, and a Survey

May 14 2018

Our favorite customers,

Welcome to another Doppler update!

In this update, we will be sharing some pictures of the first injection molded parts of the Sandman, an update on what the app looks like, and sharing a survey that we would love for you to complete. Read on!

T1 Pictures

Injection molding is a very widely used process that is utilized to mass produce just about all plastic products. We could drone on for countless updates about injection molding and how it works, but we will keep it very short here.

Basically, a steel tool is created which has two halves. When pushed together the space between the halves are in the shape of the final product. Once these steel tools are created you heat up plastic pellets and inject them at a high temperature into the steel tools. The part then cools down and then the halves separate. The part is then pushed off of the steel tool and you have an injection molded part!

Basic injection molding

The first parts that come out of the injection molding tooling are called "T1". These parts are never correct and always need at least some tweaking and dialing in before they are close to perfect. On the Doppler, we have 5 injection molded parts but they are the 5 most important parts of the entire product. Here is a breakdown of the parts and pictures of the T1 samples.

Please note, colors and textures will change! These are NOT what the finished products will look like at all!

Main Body

The main part of the product, basically 3/4 of the exterior of the product.

The surface finish of this part isn't great (normal for a T1) plus is there some warpage on the part. These will be easy fixes!

Display Frame

This part goes over the main display circuit board and allows us to create our own display segments.

This part will be shot in a special formulation of plastic that will prevent light from bleeding through it. In general, we are happy with how this part looks as well but will reassess when it's shot in the proper plastic.

Speaker Frame

The part that the display circuit board sits in, as well as what seals the speakers into the main body.

This part looks awesome! We are very happy with how it came out.

USB Cover

This is the part that covers the USB circuit boards

This part looks pretty good, although there needs to be a couple changes to smooth things out and make it look nicer. Obviously, these parts won't be this color either. You can also see what the USB-C cover will look like, these will come with the USB-C upgrade kit along with a new circuit board.

Window

The tinted window that will cover the display.

This part is obviously not tinted at all, but so far looks pretty good!

Again, these parts aren't final in any way, shape, color, or form. They are the first parts to come out of the tool and they are a starting point.

Our tooling shop is making a couple small adjustments and then we will continue to dial things in and get things looking perfect!

New App Design

In our last update, we introduced the Zemingo group, an app company that will be helping us with the Doppler. I would like to share with you a sneak peek of what the app has transformed into:

This isn't final yet, but we are very happy with how things are looking! We went back and forth with their designers to get something we are truly happy with. Just a reminder, this is what we had before, what a difference!

Keep up the great work Zemingo!

Now We Need to Hear From You!

We need your input! As we have been developing this product we have made a bunch of assumptions along the way. Most of these have been about user behavior and what type of phone they have... etc. Well, now we actually want to verify some of these assumptions and learn more about our users! Filling this survey out will allow us to make sure the Doppler does what the majority of our customers actually want!

The survey should take no more than 5 minutes Thanks!

Click here for the survey.

That's it for now, let us know if you have any questions and now we have to get back to work!

Thanks!
-PAI team