The most exciting and nerve wracking thing a product design team ever does is test their final product. It is nerve wracking because there is always the chance that it might fail. You wake up in the night worried that you didn't work out the x factor and the joints will fail. You stay up late at night calculating the forces that the testing it going to exert and trying to convince yourself that you took all of them into account, front loading, side loading and all. You think about the people running the test, since you cannot be there or you may influence it, and what they might do wrong.
Then the test begins. No use worrying about it any more. There is nothing you can do. But Wait. Finally, after the first day of testing and 40 phone calls to the test director, he calls you back. "Yep, 1000 cycles. No problem. We'll start her back up tomorrow." You breath a sigh of relief and you start planning the next test. After life cycle tests are complete, then the parts go into fire testing. The unit will not survive. You start feeling sorry for the little bugger as if it has feelings. How do you decide which unit you send to its death? They do, actually, all look alike. So, reach in the box and grab one. Then you check your e-mails and someone has asked you about a factor on the current test. "Are you checking temperature? It was never designed for frequent, continuous cycles. The temperature could rise and alter the results." Ahhrrrggg! You knew you forgot something. You drop an e-mail to the test director at 10:30 at night. Within seconds, you have a response, "We'll get a thermo couple on it first thing in the morning." Now you wonder if there could have been a temperature rise that could have done damage with all those repeated cycles. Is the test valid? Is it going to fail because you didn't think of the temperature because you were only concerned about getting the test complete as soon as the part operation will allow? Morning comes without a word from the testing team. Noon comes and goes. You want to call but you don't want to be a pest. Finally, it's afternoon and you decide you will give it an hour. You get a phone call from the fire testing group. You talk about the tiny details that are required to make sure that there are no unknown hazards that will pop up in the test like toxic vapours or sudden explosions. Then you realize it is too late to bother the other test team. You wait. You get busy. You assume that no news is good news. You don't call on day three of testing. Then, you are at your customer's doing a trial fitting and your phone rings. It's the test director. "We have finished all 5000 cycles with no sign of wear. The temperature never rose more than 5 degrees above ambient. Everything is great." At least that is what you think he said as your phone cuts in and out and the sound of the drill in the back ground is drowning out the parts that the phone is allowing through. Two days later the test results arrive. Yes! That is exactly what he said. No issues what so ever. No leaks. No temperature rise. No loss of function. No time delays. Everything is exactly as it was designed to be. Suddenly the answer comes to you. Send that tough little bugger up to the fire test. He can handle it!
0 Comments
Here we are on the other side of the equator. While the northern hemisphere is emerging from their frozen dens, the southern is gathering their harvest and preparing to nestle in for a long, cold, dark winter. As fate would have it, SoftSlam is waking up and the excitement is palpable.
Over the last few weeks, things have really heated up. First, we brought in a new shareholder. That makes three of us now. We are hoping to add a little excitement in our yearly shareholder meetings with a third person to liven the atmosphere. Second, we are well and truly on our way to production. Time always seems to lag and as a project manager that is forever watching the clock and reporting on progress, my anxiety is amping up as I attempt to ensure that everything progresses smoothly and without undue delays. With a seven week lead time, we will have our tool in hand before the first day of winter which seems to be lurking just around the corner. In the interim, I have been ordering all the bits and pieces that go along with the tool so that we will hit the ground running with production of 1000 pieces as soon as the first shots are approved. What an exciting time! While I've been taking care of production. Nick has been making sales calls and installing prototypes across the country. We have so many happy customers. Each happy customer means one fewer chance of an injury, accident or damaged structure. Once again, I have to say, the month is moving fast but we have achieved so much!
Testing was the next item on the agenda. We can check that off. Well, not so fast. We've finally gotten the product to the independent verifier for testing longevity of SoftSlam and the force that SoftSlam can with stand. As it turns out, we can't get SoftSlam certified because it is so new and so unique. There are no standards that cover it. If there are no standards, there is no certification. As much as that is a blow to my ego, it proves what we have been telling you for three months. There is nothing in the world like SoftSlam. We will set the standard by which all up and coming copies adhere to. In a day and age when it seems that everything has been invented and most new things are only adjustments or improvements of old things, it is truly remarkable to be on the cutting edge of technology with something so new, so innovative that it will change homes and hotels forever. It will improve safety with door operation that no one ever dreamed could be achieved. We have used SoftSlam in our house for 2 years without fail. We have had people come and test SoftSlam with what I would consider an abusive slam. We, ourselves, trying to establish the limits of SoftSlam have abused our doors. We are fortunate that 1. Nick is a joiner-carpenter and could fix any damage if we'd done any and 2. We have solid hardwood doors and jambs that have not even noticed the abusive nature of the slams. Nick has even put a SoftSlam in a vice or two to see just how much pressure it can withstand. Even without the results of the independent testing laboratory, we offer a 100% replacement policy if any part of your SoftSlam fails. Next step - Rotorua Home and Garden Show. Don't forget to e-mail us for your buy one / get one free passes to the show. Feel the excitement! Nick and Elizabeth We are nearly done with the first month of the year. It's hard to believe that the time has passed so quickly. While many of our suppliers have been prolonging their holidays and getting back to work, we have been very busy.
Next month, we premier SoftSlam at the Rotorua Home and Garden Show. If you have not yet received your buy one get one free pass to the show, please contact us. We will make sure you get one. We are building our stall and making sure our visitors have all the comforts of home. SoftSlam will be installed on multiple doors for you to test. More prototypes will be available to touch, feel, and test. Of course, our friendly staff will also be there to answer all of your questions and help you place your orders. Our excitement is building. With each passing day, we are told by one more hotel owner how much SoftSlam will help their customer ratings, a child care manager breathes a sigh of relief as she realizes that she won't have to worry about children getting their fingers in the door, an elderly care manager knows that soon, his charges won't be startled and awoken by a slamming door, an architectural firm decides that a new, better option will improve their customer's purchase of a lifetime. We hope that your excitement is also building. See you soon, Elizabeth and Nick Today we have unleashed the preview of our Kickstarter campaign. Please take a moment to review it. Any tips, tricks or questions / answers that will make our campaign a success are greatly appreciated.
As anyone that has ever entered a business on their own knows, it takes many long hours, a lot of money and stress to make a business successful. Thanks to fund raising sites like Kickstarter, small companies have the opportunity to become successful before the big companies swallow them whole. But it takes a community. Without your help, we may never be able to realize our dream of having safe doors in every home, child care, elderly care, and hospital. We are only looking for advice right now. Don't be shy. Give us a hand. The holidays are over and the new year has begun. With great excitement and renewed energy we all dive into the tasks we left behind. For some of us, those tasks were BIG; new things that we needed to learn; new ideas that we needed to explore. For others, those tasks are exciting, a new opportunity to excel, a new project to show how we shine. And for a few, those are the tasks that we left behind because we wanted to put them off to the last possible moment. That moment is here and now the tasks must be undertaken no matter how much we'd like to avoid them.
The one thing that we all have in common is that once we begin working on these tasks, we need to focus, concentrate, move those tasks to completion. Disruptions cause a loss of mental flow. Maybe, you are like me and work at home. The doors and windows are open, the power keeps dropping in and out, the noise of the highway spills into the room and WHAM! a door slams. My mind jumps from "Oh, I need to write this blog and make sure all the words are in the right place, spelled correctly and make sense" to who opened that door? Why wasn't the other door closed? Was anyone hurt? And my writing is interrupted, my mental flow is jarred, my thoughts are lost. Now, I have to waste time trying to pick up my train of thought and move forward. One slam isn't too bad. I can recover quickly. The door is closed. My do not disturb sign is out. The house is secure. WHAM! Okay, maybe the house isn't secure. Did someone open a door again? Where is the dog? Does it really matter? No, probably not but since I'm thinking about it... I work from home. I get to be home alone all day. As long as I am concentrating on a task I like, the interruptions aren't too painful. Not everyone is as lucky as me. In an office situation, doors slamming with people coming and going can continuously interrupt your train of thought. When that happens too frequently, you will begin to feel irritated. After irritation comes stress. Stress can lead to multiple health issues including stroke and heart attack. If you are lucky, you can leave that stress behind when you leave the building. If your are not so lucky, you can take that stress home with you and rub it off on your spouse and children. Worse yet, stress can interrupt your sleep and interrupted sleep can cause more stress. Not all stressors and interruptions can be avoided but those that are resultant from a slamming door can be eliminated completely with SoftSlam. SoftSlam absorbs the force of a slamming door so that the door meets the jamb gently, reducing the bang that sets your heart racing, your teeth on edge and your stress levels soaring. This month, we are working on our final new year tweeks to the SoftSlam. Our upcoming production run will have the best of SoftSlam engineering in its embodiment. Look for us at the Rotorua Home and Garden Show. Cheers, Nick and Elizabeth The holidays have come and gone. Now it's time to buckle up and make sure that the new year, 2017 is the best ever. So many people have resolutions that they won't fulfill. Others have resolutions that they will. For us, the year means getting the upgrades to SoftSlam complete. Hitting the road and demonstrating this great new hardware to all of our fellow Kiwis.
While we are still concentrating on New Zealand, we hope to be away to the US and possibly even Canada by the end of summer. Traveling packs a lot of excitement as well as a lot of worry. Meeting our customers, introducing our product to potential customers and knowing, when we go to sleep at night, that we have helped make someone's day better makes it all worth it. I hope that you will see us on the road soon. Our first stop is the Rotorua Home and Garden show in February. We will have great new give aways, a fabulous new booth, and of course, SoftSlams for sale. You will be able to meet our founder and our engineering team while you are there. See you soon. Happy New Year, Elizabeth and Nick A new year, a new you. Or, in this case, a new year, a new SoftSlam. SoftSlam is getting a makeover for the new year. It will still be the same great product but this year we will feature a faster reset for those who like to play with their doors, not just close them and move on.
In practice, we have never had an issue with the current reset time but when introducing the product to our customers, we were asked. Like the famous quote, ask and you shall receive. We want our customers to feel satified and proud of their purchase. We want our customers to feel comfortable and confident when they demonstrate their new safety product to their friends. Most of all, we want to make sure children are safe from door / hand injuries. We should have our upgrade complete and ready for demonstration at the Rotorua Home and Garden show. Find us there. Don't forget to watch this space for our free pass give away to the show! Keep your fingers safe. Wind in the summer isn't often something that we celebrate. Today was clearly an exception.
With presure on for the upcoming home and garden show, we needed a good windy day to make a video of the SoftSlam in action. With gusts up to 35 kph, we were able to chop carrots and bang doors closed for the camera at our leisure. Company arrived while we were still playing with the strength and power of the slams without SoftSlam installed. (The slamming is pretty anti-climatic with SoftSlam installed.) With bits of carrot all over the floor we were forced to explain our apparent loss of sanity. We felt better at the end of our visit when the parties all agreed that SoftSlam is the next "thing". Not everyone has children to protect or likes to spend these bright summer days with their windows and doors open to let their houses breathe but few people that I have met enjoy the sound of a door slamming behind their back because someone, somewhere opened a door at just the right time. Our videos will soon be available for your enjoyment. Watch this space. Elizabeth |
AuthorElizabeth James: Archives
May 2020
Categories |
HoursM-F: 8am - 5pm
|
Name
Nicolas Hopkins
|
Telephone
+64 21 230 3218
|
|