You are probably looking at this post because you contacted us and are still waiting for a response so this is my attempt at justifying that delay. We are a small self-funded company that makes all of our own stuff. That includes our hardware, website, software, marketing materials, advertising, sales, custom projects, cnc machines (Travis builds these) , demo videos, book keeping, blog, support emails, and personally writing back to each inquiry. We are run by only three people, Travis who does all of our hardware development and runs the production at our shop in Austin, Texas, Peter who deals with all software, demo videos, and support, and myself who does everything else. We all take part in product development, software design, marketing materials, support, and actually performing using the products that we make. We currently have about ten people on our assembly line making controllers and a handful of talented freelancers that help us bring our products to life. So with all this going on we are constantly juggling our priorities to make it all fit in. I can honestly say as I am writing this I have no idea how we get it all done. We could easily outsource our hardware production and get everything made for cheaper overseas, but we prefer to make quality hand-assembled products in-house and choose to do what we love and and actually make the products we sell over maximizing profits. With that said we do really appreciate every piece of mail we get and will get back to all inquiries.

The fastest way to get an answer is to use our support forums, or follow our twitter and blog for the latest news and announcements. You can also sign up for our newsletter where we will eventually announce everything. If none of these methods suit you rest assured we will get back to you, it just might take longer then expected. If you really need to send us gifts, free beer, or need to unload a large sum of cash right away you can always mail it straight to our shop.

Thanks,
Jay Smith
Founder

Filed under:
news by Jay

Thanks to the dot com era, the term branding has almost surpassed “b2b marketing” to become the lamest word in business. If you are in marketing, well just take a cue from Bill Hicks. Seriously though the term comes from livestock branding, a means to identify ownership that dates back to ancient times. I have always liked the way a brand looks especially on wood, so in 2003 when we made our first “production model” controller called the Tactic, we made our very own Livid brand. This is the very same brand we use today. Travis cut it out of Brass and steel (brass on the brand because is heats up a lot faster) and we started branding our instruments. Six years later we still brand each and every controller. Travis actually does it himself by heating up the brand with a torch and pressing it to the back of the controller before it goes into the finish process. Here is a video of Travis branding a batch of controllers. I really had to bite my tongue on the cowboy jokes here.

Filed under:
news by Jay

It’s spring, all of our parts are in and we are ready to start assembly of the new line of Ohm64 controllers. 

Not so fast. We took about a week to clean up and organize our shop. Running a small manufacturing outfit can sometimes be (ok always be) extremely fast pace and hectic. You can always see parts and projects in various stages, wood flying from the mulling machine, solder paste next to your lunch in the fridge, and Thundercloud Subs (great local sub spot near the shop) soda cups all over. Travis, Jay, Gabe, Dell, and Dan cleaned, organized, and make everything pretty for the arrival of parts and components to start production. People are always asking to see where we make our controllers, so here it is.

Main Warehouse Room

Front Office

Soon to be controllers

Second Floor

Metal Bot

Electronic Assembly Room

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news by Jay

Travis has been building a new CNC machine to cut the aluminum faceplates. We have been contracting this part of production out, but we are bringing it in-house when this machine is finished.
The ShopBot that mills the wood bodies isn’t fit for this job because cutting metal requires a cooling bath. In this video you can see the coolant dousing the bit, along with the source of coolant at the bottom:

Unfortunately, this test run ended in a bit of disaster, as Travis described in his email:

“After making all the modifications to stiffen up the z-axis and install the re-circulating flood coolant system, our new machine made its first quality cutting today. I made about 1/3rd of the cutouts and then, disaster. To no fault of its own, the top z-axis mount came loose and buried the bit in the table.”
The “fault” was an attempt at making do with a cheap bearing mount. Nothing $15 won’t fix!
We are looking forward to that fix so we can start producing!
Sadly, this video doesn’t have the disaster in it. But it’s pretty cool anyway.
Here’s a pic of the failure:

Metal cutter goes awry.

Filed under:
news by Peter