SUMMER IS HERE :)
Thank goodness we are finally getting some beautiful hot weather. I’m writing this from a Canadian perspective where one of the jokes is that there are ten months of winter followed by two months of bad snowmobiling. I know that there are plenty of folks in Anville that live in Australia, Argentina, Chile etc. and that your weather may not be as perfect right now but we here at Vestratto are loving these long hot days and nights and are making plans to come hang out with you this winter. We’re blown away that ANVILs have already shipped to more than 20 different countries all over the world. LOVE IT!!!! We are building out some great relationships that will help you get an ANVIL locally and really want you guys to check us out at
Summer in Canada is sooo short though that everyone here has the exact same idea at the exact same time. VACATION. Thankfully we have been building our inventory up and we are working right through to make sure everyone who wants an Anvil can get one as quickly as possible. There are some inevitable summer slowdowns expected though. For example tomorrow is a holiday here in Ontario so anyone who ordered Thursday through today, your units will ship on Tuesday August 2nd. Your kit is ready to go but there are no courier or postal services here tomorrow.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
Since I first introduced the ANVIL with our now patent granted MULITI-LAYER vaporizer oven technology our focus has been modelling both our products and our quality management system from a Medical Device perspective. This aligns with my previous experience and I know it builds great products, a great company and a great community of users and friends. I also know that the very best ideas for our future improvements and products come from you. So I thought I’d take a minute to share with you some aspects of the current build that we have improved recently based on your direct feedback. For those of you who don’t obsess about these details you can skip out here and not miss too much. The second half of this week’s post detail how, based on your feedback and complaints, we are making ANVIL the very best torch based, soon with its own proprietary IH, vape available. In the coming weeks I will be providing an update on the Vestratto IH. I can say that we recently received shipments of the custom glass carriers for the coil and the micro-processors we needed for the first Beta batch. The processors have been insanely difficult to get in volume but we’ll have more on the IH soon.
CHEERS
JOHN
Glad you stuck around. When I started Vestratto December 17th last year I was steadfast in my conviction that there were only three things that mattered in a vaporizer. The vapour, the vapour and the vapour. I have to admit that 8 months later I have become a little more open minded about what additional items really matter to you guys. I’m a thick skulled, bull in a china shop dork sometimes, but I can learn. For example, at least initially, I paid too little attention to minor imperfections and blemishes in the build that, while they had negligible effect on vapour performance, had a negative impact on your perceptions of your vape, and of Vestratto. We have worked really hard to fix our internal attitudes and expectations for ourselves to get the ANVIL build up to your standards and I assure you we will continue to work hard to fix the issues you raise. The items I’ve singled out here aren’t the only things we’ve improved recently but it gives an idea without getting too deep into the mud.
- ANVIL mouthpieces are now being mechanically polished by a third party contractor with dedicated industrial polishing equipment. It turns out that the secret to a great polish is more about having a defect free part coming off of the CNC machine than a great polishing process. We’ve made a lot of subtle changes to the software and cutting tools in our processes to improve the surface finish quality BEFORE we start polishing. It turns out that if we start with a defect in the part, polishing likely only highlights that defect and makes it stand out even more.
- I am personally so stoked about the integrated stem. I am the inventor of the original variable airflow control valve but you have to know when its time for a better idea to take over. That is not to say that there is anything wrong with the original valve system. There isn’t. But after the first couple of thousands of Anvils hit the field we began to realize that there might be a better way. The Integrated stem is more stable, easier to adjust, has virtually identical airflow control range, is easier to assemble and clean and reduces two parts into one. Most importantly to me we were able to achieve these improvements in a “backwards compatible” configuration so that there are no obsolete ANVILs. Critical to the Vestratto continuous improvement paradigm is that customers can be brought forward to current revision for both safety and efficacy. We are also pleased we were able to achieve this with the airflow control located BEFORE the herb chamber, so that the pressure drop from a tight airflow is located over the herb. In an AFTER the herb chamber airflow control the pressure drop is in your mouth and does not result in an “herb pressure drop” resulting in finer aerosolization, just a slower/hotter airflow .
- Our newest generation of herb chambers employ a variety of state of the art processes that, when fused together definitely add up to more than the sum of the parts. We are proud of recent innovations that include more accurate herb temperature sensing, laser cutting to convert the sidewalls into a screen, improved YAG laser welding to allow both medical grade 316 SS in herb/vapour contact to be combined with ferro-magnetic 416 SS to enable magnetic functions like hot-swap and then total chamber electropolishing for a consistently beautiful, iron free, medical grade surface.
- General ANVIL fit-ups keep getting better and better. Over the past 8 months I have periodically released pictures of the laser weld on the bottom of the herb chambers as a proxy for the state of our process skills and execution. The laser weld is “autogenous” meaning it has no filler metal so no room for error. The quality of that weld getting better and better is a metaphor for the entire ANVIL improving. The fit-up considerations for just this one weld are the diameter and depth of the pocket on the herb chamber, the diameter and thickness of the disc, the edge finish and consistency of both parts, the laser intensity, laser spot size, step-over spot percentage, size and concentricity of both parts to each other and to the laser’s rotary chuck. In a seemingly simple welded joint there is a lot going on and that makes it a great proxy to monitor the Vestratto quality system as a whole.
Thanks for sticking around. I know the details can get boring but, even if you aren’t personally obsessed with them like I am, I want you to know that you can trust Vestratto to be passionate about those details and more importantly about improving on them.
CHEERS AGAIN
John