Hi There- Its John here.
Shipping Update
I’m pleased to say that we started shipping Users Editions to the “Late January” pre-order crew last Tuesday. With that group pretty much behind us now we are now going to begin shipping the Launch replacement units this coming week. We’re excited to get you this new generation of Anvils. We’ve been in the market for 8 weeks now and are pretty satisfied with our progress so far. Since we started the non-revolution Revolution I’ve learned that there are plenty of opinions on both sides of every argument. At Vestratto we are not here to dictate to you. As our bandwidth allows we will be expanding both the width and the depth of our offering so you can have the Anvil you want.
The Launch replacement units are of generally better machining quality, tighter tolerances and more consistent finish. And as an added bonus we’ve added a number of cool new features to the Anvil based on your feedback. Honestly this Users Edition is the unit I wished I had gotten out in December. Not on the basis of vapour quality. I am 100% certain that the vapour quality of the Launch units was something most of you were very pleased with. Your compliments on the vapour have been appreciated and have inspired us to work even harder. I have always maintained that the three most important qualities of any vaporizer are the vapour, the vapour and the vapour.
Improving Yields
I thought I’d let you look behind the curtain tonight at one of the parts that makes the Anvil magical. Mostly I’d like to engage you in our quest to improve the yield on the CopperCore oven. Over time I am striving to drive our yields across the board to 99.999%. “Five nines” is a coveted quality level that we strived for in the medical industry. Its totally in our DNA that our customers medicating here at Vestratto deserve the same effort and attention to detail as any other medical device. I’ve received correspondence recently that folks are really benefitting from the work we’ve done on the Anvil so far and rest assured we are just getting going.
CopperCore Ovens
With the Users Edition we have changed the outer stainless layer of this batch to 416 Stainless steel to increase its magnetic properties. This prepares the Anvil for the introduction of a high efficiency induction heater in the future. We’ll have more updates on the IH in the future. You are going to notice that the 416 stainless develops a darker patina than the original 316 when used with a torch. It is clear that in the future we will likely allow customers to specify either steel as the outer layer. We have to be mindful of too many variants while we are still small but as we gain scale we will provide more choices. For those that plan to use their torch exclusively they will find a slightly brighter look over time with the original 316 Founders. With these User Edition upgrades we welcome feedback since many of you will have both ovens to compare one against the other. Let us know what you think. It will help make the Anvil better.
Manufacturing Yield
The CopperCore Oven is constructed of two layers of stainless forged together by an inner layer of copper. We inject the copper between the layers at 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s a tricky business and we’re getting better at it. So much of our RandD is making best guesses because at 2,000 degrees you can’t just slip on a GoPro and lean in for a look. As part of the Founders release some of you received ovens that had small embedded air bubbles. okay, some weren’t as tiny as I remembered QC’ing them :( I honestly thought that these ovens were pretty damn good. Still do. The bubbles represented a mass differential of less than 0.1%, if that. And they still made amazing vapour. But we all know how the “internet” grabs onto something and then tosses it around like a pit bull with a rag doll. The photo below shows the micro pitting of some very small trapped bubbles. These bubbles were coming from the pressurized gas diffusing into the molten copper and getting trapped inside. The copper is quenched and these little devils didn’t have either the time or strength to work their way out. As kids you saw this every time you dug into a whipped pudding. Functionally these bubbles are a negligible “flaw”. Originally I was going to sell these units at a discount - a “scratch and dent” approach - to folks that had a financial pressure. WOW! Got skewered! As a result I responded that Vestratto was no longer going to support scratch and dent initiatives. It’s a shame really because there was NOTHING functional wrong with the performance of those Anvils. That said, we have had to push our process and knowledge to try and shrink, and hopefully one day eliminate any gas inclusion imperfections. This photo shows the nature of these tiny trapped bibles and how they show up on the CopperBlock oven.
Our enhanced quality expectation has meant that Vestratto is still not shipping as fast as we would like. The units we are shipping now are probably at the 99.9% bubble free. This has been achieved by the two pronged approach of reducing both the size, and the number of entrapped bubbles. Fair warning. Our proprietary process is difficult and may still yield micro bubbles as we refine it. If you get one please don’t freak out. If you can’t see it with the naked eye neither could we. If you magnify any surface it looks pretty rough. The image below is from the current production run. We are convinced that one or two more production batches and we will be coming up on our 99.999 percent yield.
If it takes us a little while longer to get to five nines we just have to live with that. In the interim the Anvils you are starting to receive this week are pretty slick and I look forward to your feedback.
Cheers
John