Hi There- Its John here.
Well another very busy week has passed and we are a lot closer to getting the Users Edition Anvils out the door. I know everyone is anxious so I thought I would start off with a quick manufacturing update.
The ONLY part we are waiting for is the CopperCore Ovens. It is the “secret sauce” of the Anvil and not un-surprisingly the most complex part.
The CopperCore oven is comprised of three pieces that Vestratto makes in house, which are then welded together with gas tight welds, vacuum brazed and finally returned to us for finish machining. The parts that get welded were completed by ourselves at the beginning of last week. The parts were assembled into a “blank” and press fit together on Tuesday. The “blanks” were delivered to the Laser Welder on Wednesday. Welding began Thursday afternoon and will be completed tomorrow. Unfortunately we ran out of Argon gas (which shields the part during laser welding) early Friday afternoon. New tanks will arrive tomorrow morning. The batch of welded oven blanks will be picked up by me as soon as they are ready and delivered to our vacuum brazing facility tomorrow afternoon. Generally we have a one day turnaround at brazing as the entire batch is done in one go. I anticipate that we will be able to pick the brazed blanks up Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning latest. We will then begin final machining in our own factory. The final machining will occur on multiple machines so we will be producing finished ovens as we go. I am hoping we are shipping Users Editions next week.
Everything else is well in hand. Because this is really important to all of us I plan to provide another update on Thursday night.
I thought I’d share some of the design improvements you suggested back with you. The 10mm joint is implemented in the mouthpiece. I purchased three 10mm adapters from three different stores. The most helpful shop by far was Squisha House Artisan Glass. Shout out to those guys in Burlington Ontario. I have designed the joint based on the scientific glass standard and tweaked it to fit the three pieces. I’m pretty certain it will work for most glass pieces. If it doesn’t I can guarantee you that the Anvil meets the Schott Glass standard.
We have implemented a change in the hole on the bottom of the herb chambers. Rather than a circle we have cut a hex. This will allow us to use a standard 1/8” allan key if things get “stuck” when hot as is sometimes the case during hot swapping. In future we can build the hex key geometry into the stands, tools etc.
The new screens are going to be thicker, 0.01” and will have a slot for the Vestratto removal tool.
As promised the heat shields are now swappable on the Users Edition. The removable mouthpiece “locks” the heat shield using the two o-rings at the top. The o-rings also do a great job of isolating the threads so that we don’t experience resin welds. We plan to add more colours in the future but obviously Purple Haze is next. Someone is gonna “owe me their left nut” :) You know who you are and Purple Haze is coming.
The terp chambers are being updated with air slots to improve the convection nature of the chambers. These slots will also enable significantly more airflow while allowing full access to the bottom of the screen for cleaning. We anticipate a modest uptick in flavour but will have more to report Thursday.
The titanium blanks for the “spiral filter” are in house and will be twisted this week. The filter sandwiches between the end of the condenser and the removable mouthpiece. The “legs” stand the the start of the filter off from the condenser opening to avoid a choke/clog point. I anticipate one full turn to take out the heavy, non-bioavailable aerosol particles and any herb debris, but want to let the balance of that Anvil vapour through.
We will also be putting together maintenance kits this week that include o-rings and screens. The o-rings in the Users edition are Viton metric 5 x 1 (5mm id 1mm cross section) - 3 each on the condenser. Viton 6 X 1 - 2 each on the stem. Viton 8 x 1 - 4 each on the airflow valve. Nitrile 12 x 1 - 1 each on the heat shield. As I have previously stated we want to outfit Anvils with industry standard parts so that if anything happens to Vestratto you can still maintain your Anvil without “special” parts. The 0.320” screens are available from other vendors and in literally 100’s of vape dealers and stores. The o-rings are all industry standard as well.
I am going to include a few more items in Thursday’s update and hopefully some good news about the CopperCore ovens. Thanks for hanging in with us and sorry that Late January is now looking more like Early February.
Cheers,
John