Manufacturing Update 11: On Our Way to Mass Assembly

Manufacturing Update 11: On Our Way to Mass Assembly
2025 note: this article is an archive of the 2016-2017 Kello blog.
You can learn more about this adventure here. Note that this is meant for posterity and archiving purposes!

Dear Kelloists,

Flash update to keep you in sync with what’s going on at the factory. We’ve finished pre-assembly and are now going to start mass assembly. 

What Is Pre-assembly?

Pre-assembly is the very last step before starting mass assembly. A team of 15 workers is formed on how to assemble the units and they assemble a test batch of 32 units. We control these products one by one to pinpoint issues that might happen during mass assembly.

We were here the entire time to make sure nothing was forgotten and we have green-lighted the 32 units. We’ll ship 15 of them next Monday to the volunteers from the last update.

Following our timeline, mass assembly will start tomorrow (July 7th). It will take 4 to 5 days to make all of the units and shipping to backers will start on Monday, July 17th.

Pictures of the Pre-assembly line

Inserting the LED screen in the front panel
Putting the speaker in its case
Some units waiting for their speaker
Kello's front panels
Our assembly line
Complete units that passed the QC test
SMT (Surface Mounting Technology) machines
Some Kello motherboards
This one didn’t pass QC because a resistor wasn’t properly soldered
All pre-production units being thoroughly tested by us

What about shipping?

As stated above, we’ll receive all 3000 units at our third party logistic vendor’s warehouse end of next week, and we’ll start shipping the following week.

Delivery Times

We are shipping all units from Hong Kong, using world renowned postal services, so your units will be in good hands. Delivery times depend on the courier and the country you live in, but in most cases they are between 7 and 14 working days, starting from the date we ship your package. Every package will have a tracking number that you will receive by email right after your unit is shipped.

Addresses

You should have received an email asking you to confirm your address. Please confirm your address as soon as possible in order to prevent delay in shipping your unit. If you haven’t received the email, please tell us at support@getkello.com.

We will keep you posted on how mass production goes!

Cheers,