Cool. What's up, Claude Plain? You guys might have noticed that we have a new screwdriver out and it did not take three years to make this time.
That was due to a massive team effort from everybody involved.
We thought it might be a cool exclusive if we talked about the design process and give you a bit more of a deeper dive into how we did it more than we did the screwdriver.
There's a lot of work that actually goes into making a product and not all of it can make it into a YouTube video.
Especially even though the screwdriver was, I think, 35 minutes long, there was a lot of stuff that had to be cut,
A, from initial filming, B, in post, just because if we had all of it, it would have been a three, four, five-hour documentary.
So this, while probably won't be four hours, will just give you kind of like the behind-the-scenes story behind the stubby and kind of how we took what was originally a three-year timeline
and leveraged our experience from that timeline to make the new stubby come out way quicker.
So, as with all good stories, it starts with the beginning and that beginning was the launch of the regular screwdriver.
We were blown away by the success of the launch.
You can watch my Meet the Team, which goes through kind of my view on it, and that's a pretty cool one to watch, not biased at all.
But we were very blown away by the success of this.
So much so that the months after the launch were basically just me 100% trying to stay on top of making sure manufacturing was going.
We were getting the screwdrivers on time, that as many people would get their screwdriver before Christmas as possible, because we blew through all the waves.
We had a plan, and then we sold out of the plan in a month, and I had to catch up.
We had to catch up, and it was crazy.
During that time, Herman came to us with an idea for the next project.
Herman always thinking about the next project. Herman is the founder of Megapro, and kind of the brain behind a lot of the technology here in terms of ideation,
and he's constantly looking for ways that we can take what we already have and make new tools from it.
So I can't remember the exact time.
It was probably around September, or comes after September.
October? October. It was around there he came to us with this chungus.
I don't know what size this is. What size is this?
This is the biggest crap. What size is the paper?
It's big. We have this big paper here. It's chungus size.
It's the size I just invented. And this 3D print with an injection molded end cap.
Right? And he said, this is the idea for LTT's stubby screwdriver.
So if Arthur wants to pan around here and look at the chungus print,
this basically is a cross section of a slim down version of our current screwdriver.
We have the bit storage system for the stubby is going to only be six.
Yeah. And then a slim down handle, which is just a squish trilobula design and a fixed shaft.
Right? That was the plan. And this was the 3D model, which I have broken.
Don't worry about it. So at the time we're like, cool idea, bro.
But we have 99 problems and a new screwdriver.
I hate one of them. If you cash my drip. Right?
Like we were just trying to produce screwdrivers.
Oh, and plus fixed shaft in a screwdriver wasn't really a plan for us.
We're like, it has to be a ratcheting. Okay.
And we were nervous that if we added a ratcheting, we just make it too long.
But anyways, me, had even one free day in the middle of all of that,
decided to just go like super low effort, like MVP prototype.
I literally took a regular screwdriver.
Changed out the shaft for just a ratchet gear and then press fit a 3D printed
shafty boy on there and took a bandsaw and just one time chopped this thing in
like roughly half. It's not straight because our bandsaw probably an old bandsaw by now because
we would have gotten rid of it by the time stuff launches.
I just sort it off and I remachine the, the shaft that holds the bit clip on.
And we made a, it works, but it's, it's garbage prototype, which is kind of how
we want our first MVPs to be. They meet the minimum requirements and they were quick to make that way.
Linus can hold it and say, I hate it or I don't hate it.
Linus didn't exactly hate it. But he didn't understand why we needed a stubby and it sat on ice for a while until
megapro, oh it's in the box, sent us this, which was a little bit more of an effort
of having a functional prototype. Basically it's literally the same ratchet with a shorter shaft.
They did a really cool like machine steel ring for shattering of something we might do
in the future and a properly working, you know, bit storage system.
And we were like, this is cool. We could do a little bit better with the fit of the handle.
I thought it was cool. Linus was like, eh, we don't need a stubby.
I don't understand what the point of stubby is.
Enter the NERG FORGE PC where he was trying to do, I think it was hard line water tubing
and he was like, I cannot screw this thing in with the Chungus boy because he was trying
to do it at 90 degree. I'm like, I have a solution.
I ran and got this and an M6 bit and I think it might have made an appearance in that video
although don't quote me on that. At that point he greenlit the project and I was like, cool, I have no time.
I'm going to hire someone to take care of it for me, right?
So we entered Rob and Rob armed with the knowledge that we had from launching this screwdriver
and a bunch of new equipment that I think we did an exclusive on.
I think we did a tour. But the SLS machine, his goal was like literally, it was like a trial by fire.
I was like, here's what I have, which was nothing at the time other than like the models for this.
Here's the goal of four inches.
You need to make this four inches.
Here's some inspiration of what I've done in the past.
Okay. So can you tell the people how we went from that, which is basically 3D printed prototypes
to what I call the final prototype before we approved tooling?
Because at this stage of filming right now, this is probably...
So the date right now is like, we're coming up to April and we have just approved tooling
and currently the goal is to meet LTX.
We will see in the future if we meet that or not.
But we've had this for like a couple of months now and tooling's been well underway for a while.
So I don't know, why don't you walk the people through kind of like, you started a new job.
You had this like goal.
How did you... Like what is your thought process? What is your kind of prototyping like methodology to go from essentially what is like...
Yes, we made one. It looks cool, but there are some issues that Linus had to this is literally what we're going to launch.
Just injection molded. So when we started out, like Kyle was saying, I got the design files for our full size screwdriver
and then some of these prototypes. So we got the one that Megapro was working on that had pretty much the functionality that we're looking for
in terms of the bit clip and the bit storage.
But I think like how I mentioned, we wanted to tweak maybe the fit of the handle a little bit.
And then there was the one that we built internally, you know, in an afternoon, they basically cut down the full size one.
So kind of armed with that, I started poking around the CAD model, flying around and figuring out which parts can we keep the same.
So we can kind of minimize the number of new molds we're making, the new parts we're ordering and then which parts do we have to change
just to make sure that when we build our little tiny version, we get the amount of access that we need to get all the bits out
while still keeping, you know, as many of the molds the same between the full size and the stubby as we can.
So in terms of what parts we can keep the same, I started taking a look at how do we start getting just enough opening
that we can comfortably get bits in and out of here without needing to change every single part.
So that was basically pretty straightforward with the CAD model.
You can start figuring out what components interact with each other when they're open, which components interact with each other when they're closed.
And then we can start seeing, is there enough in here to simply take what is our original ratchet mechanism
if we could keep everything the same and just make this shorter, could we make it work?
So after a couple of weeks of playing around, we figured out something here needs to shrink
to make sure that obviously if you look here, if we just stuck our full size ratchet inside our stubby,
half of the handle would just be the zinc part of this mechanism.
Notice this one is way longer in the throat to account for that length, right?
And like another side note here is if you shorten this, how badly does it affect your ability to can out the actual mechanism
from the plastic, which was another consideration.
So we started playing around and figuring out how much can we shorten it while keeping enough strength
so the handle doesn't just twist right off the screwdriver. So my first prototype started off with our full size, so this is the same size of the ratchet housing that goes inside our full size screwdriver.
So the first couple of times I tried it, I just 3D printed a little fixture so that we could throw this into our CNC machine
and start cutting it down and figuring out how short do we need to go to make it fit inside a form factor that looks like this.
So after a bit of playing around, kind of decided on how short do we make the zinc, how much do we need to shorten the shaft that goes into it.
And then once we had that figured out, we can start putting out some orders to our suppliers to get kind of a more proper prototype of this zinc.
So when we were figuring out how we wanted to go about that, one design was basically the same as our current design, just miniature.
So you can see we took the zinc and cut it a little shorter, we took the shaft and cut it a little shorter, and it's the same design where the shaft is pressed in.
Now in part of that discussion when we started to talk with our suppliers, they know a lot more about the details and the capabilities of their different manufacturing processes.
One of them actually recommended, since this is a little bit smaller, what about building in that shaft into the same casting as the main housing?
So that's another part that we actually tried. So now we've got some samples of both designs, one where a shaft is pressed in, the same as our current design,
and another one that we're trialing, which is recommended by our supplier, which is integrating that into one casting.
So that actually helps us in terms of supply chain and assembly because we removed an assembly step, we removed a part.
So now when we get this zinc part from our casting supplier that already has that shaft pressed in, we can save that step.
So that was in terms of how we had to modify the ratchet material, the ratchet housing design rather, and then we kind of go into how do we tweak the fit of the handle.
So that's something that we were able to do pretty easily in-house. So we went, we started testing with, we do our standard kind of fused filament 3D printing.
So we started testing this on some of our bamboo printers that we have in-house. The speed on those printers let us basically iterate these every couple of hours.
We can test a new shape. And then once we kind of settled in on something that was comfortable to use, we wanted to address how do we get something that's strong enough that we can actually start driving this screwdriver every day
without the handle just eventually cracking apart. So then we started going into kind of a prototyping method that gets us closer to a production material.
This is off of our SLS machine out of nylon 12. A laser actually melts layers of fine nylon powder together and gets a very, very similar final product to injection molding.
The real only difference that we've been noticing so far is a little bit of this surface finish. I don't know if you can see from here, but you see a little bit of layer lines.
That's just based on the resolution of the laser and the layers of powder in the part.
And then from there we started putting together little testing prototypes. We're tweaking some of the tolerances here to get just enough opening.
Some versions we had, you know, one or two millimeters difference here and we're getting some issues with access.
So once we got that dialed in, we're basically ready to order the design of the ratchet that we're looking for and the handle shapes that we're looking for.
In terms of some of the other changes that we had to make between the full size driver and the stubby driver, some of the parts we had to change were actually, if we look at this picture here,
this red piece is part of Megapro's great design that gets us that snappy feel.
So that feel right when it closes, that snap is something we wanted to make sure we transferred over from our full size driver.
But unfortunately this part needed to shorten a little bit to fit inside the length of this handle.
So one of the things that we ended up having to try...
There's the new one. I'll find an old one for you.
So because this got shorter, there's a spring inside this part that also had to get shorter.
And when we start changing the length of the spring, that was starting to change the feel of how snappy this end cap would be.
So another thing that we were testing out, a whole bunch of different test springs.
We changed the diameter of the spring basically to adjust how much force there was to try and get the fit and the feel of the new shorty pin to be the same feel as our full size pin.
So you can see here my quick and dirty method of making sure that the forces are similar to each other.
Since we don't have a setup right now that lets us do force measurement on pushing and pulling this, I just kind of hot glued one of our prototypes together.
This is our standard screwdriver. And then I kind of hot glued one with this new stubby pin inside it.
And then we can swap out the springs and we kind of trial it so that the forces are pretty much the same.
We've got to compare, we were noticing some of them, if the spring is too weak, this would just move every time and this end cap wouldn't even move.
If it's too stiff, we're basically seeing the opposite where the full size driver was moving in and out and this side wasn't moving at all.
So this is one way that we're, you know, rather than going through all the details of calculating the spring force, because at the end of the day what we're going for is we want that end cap to feel good.
We just put it together and figured out what felt the same.
We did use some elementary spring equations to guesstimate the ballpark, but fine tweaking is all done by feel.
Considering the spring isn't mission critical if you get it like a hair on, but it's more, it's easier to define the spring in terms of feel.
We're at stands right now and at this point in time just to ballpark it.
So I think there's three molds that we're making right now.
So obviously the handle changed. So what you can expect out of the, this is me talking in the past, exactly the same ratchet.
So like the same, the same like torque, the same like back torque, like ratcheting torque is like super, super low.
Like if you've ever used the regular screwdriver, you know that in most cases you can just like ratchet through a machine screw.
So it's literally the same mechanism.
Functionally, we found that shortening this doesn't cause the ratchet to fail by camming out the plastic.
There's other parts in the ratchet that will fail before that.
Having the zinc on here adds no perceivable difference to like how smoothly it goes in and out, which is great for the reasons that Robert had mentioned in terms of like economies of scale and stuff.
Right. So molds that we're redoing is the handle, which is this guy.
Again, these are all the SLS molds that we do, SLS plinths that we do before we do an injection mold.
It's kind of our best method for doing like a, how do you say it, like a, just a sanity check of kind of our design.
Cause anyone who's designed a product, there is what works in the model and then there's what works in real life.
Sometimes there's differences that you have to account for.
So having something physical that you can test and also give to Linus, who's going to incidentally show it on camera.
Also, like just get excited about it on his own terms and having something that's like, like robust enough that it's not going to break.
From that, cause he dropped stuff like that will still work.
If I bother finding it, right? So that's why we do like doing it out of the SLS.
We find that the resin stuff is really good for exterior finish because it's nice and smooth because it has way better resolution.
But unless we go to like a very rigid material, it's very brittle.
And even rigid materials brittle as well.
So press fits and stuff just don't feel right.
Plus it's a completely different chemistry. Nylon 12 is part of what makes up the polymer that we use to make this, right?
So this is an ABS nylon polymer. So, you know, it gives us some reliable properties, like especially in terms of shrinkage.
And yeah, so we're making a handle. We're making a tube and we're making this little piece.
So the three molds that we're making, except this is going to be out of Delrin, not nylon.
Cause Delrin has better mechanical properties.
If you're doing motion, you generally want Delrin.
Delrin, we make the bit clips out of Delrin.
This is still that nylon ABS polymer, so triax.
And then this is Delrin and that does all the motion.
So those are the three molds we're making.
And then we're leveraging our end cap is the same.
Our bit clip is the same. And our selector ring and all the ratchet components are the same.
And the only thing that we had to remake from the ratchet is the whole housing itself.
So at this point, what we're doing is we have this sample.
So we built a couple of ratchets and, you know, that's what this is.
It's got the new ratchet housing in there.
So end caps are the same. Select is the same. All the internal ratchet components are the same except this.
The shaft is obviously different, but that's just a machine part.
Same strong magnet. Like we compromise on nothing, right?
Like you still have the same magnet bit. It fits the same bit.
So if you already have an LTT screwdriver and you're rocking like a bunch of extra bit sets, like torques and stuff, it's just going to fit.
So unfortunately, not unfortunately, just because of physics, we're limited to six bits, right?
Like half a bit load there. But you know, throw your six common bits in there.
Like if you do like hard line water cooling, throw a couple of hexes, maybe some flats and Phillips two in there.
And now you've got a mini boy. Same torque, same ratchet feel.
So like you want to crank this, it's just going to depend on how strong your fingers are.
Yeah, but that's basically the story behind like this initial portion.
Hopefully it's going to be done by LTX.
We'll see. But by the time this releases, we will know.
Hey, welcome back. I think it's been a couple of months since you've been over here.
Yeah, since then it's been exciting. We've gotten some injection molded parts.
These are the first samples that we got for the actual injected parts.
So last time we were still working with these SLS 3D printed parts from our in-house 3D printer.
Now we've got the actual injected molded parts out of the actual material.
So that's the tube inside.
And then we've also got this tanning pin. Last time we were talking about the nylon part.
And here's that actual part out of Delrin, acetyl material.
So we've had a chance to put all that together and start getting a feel for how the real sliding action for this screwdriver is going to go.
So if we look close up in here, we can see way in here we're using the actual injected tube piece.
And then it's also riding against that actual injected tanning pin.
So now it's just as smooth as our full-size screwdriver.
Exactly the same snappy action. And then now we can finally get some approvals going on those injected molded parts.
And also the spring inside that gives it that snappy feeling.
The handle here is that dark gray color is still a nylon one.
So that's the last mold in a couple of weeks. We're going to get that and then hopefully get everything approved and get this production on the go.
We can also see here when we get our first samples, we did some work in the shop.
We cut some of them in half. We cut some angles off just so we can get some good measurements on the inside to make sure the dimensions are all accurate.
The one thing about injection molding is you can design it all perfect in CAD.
But there's a little bit of black magic going on in the mold makers when they got to figure out
how much the plastic is going to shrink and warp and stuff when it all gets injection molded.
So we just make sure we cut it apart, make sure everything fits right.
Here's another example of how we're testing. So this one we obviously just stick that end cap on and we make sure that these barbs,
when we press it in, we need to make sure that they're fitting properly.
They have the right amount of holding force and they're sitting in the right place.
Ratchet is so much smaller. Yeah, it's a real small one.
Let's see if we have a, I guess this is one that we just have again on the full size one.
But you can imagine that's the difference here. Wow.
But it feels basically the same. Yeah, yeah.
The one thing we're shooting for when we get that feel almost exactly the same.
You know, same going for that comfort in the hand,
whether you want to hold it way at the end, choke it up tight, something like that.
That's something we're tweaking a lot to make sure that it feels comfortable.
That snappy action is feeling comfortable and then it's going to be just as fidgety as our big one.
Between the last time that we saw the stubby screwdriver now,
were there any challenges that came up along the way?
Nothing major from then to now. We're kind of tweaking maybe some of the detail tolerances and things like that.
So some of the things we're looking at, for example, as we put this all together,
you can imagine when this is closed, you know, we're not talking about tons of space on the end here.
So we're tweaking where we can deal with the tolerance stack up where we can buy some space,
make sure that we can fit the same bit clip inside.
Oh, here this guy. Same bit clip we can hold those six bits,
make sure it can come out far enough that we can comfortably get the bits.
I think some of our early prototypes, I don't know if we have one here, but some of the early ones were kind of stuck with them opening just like that.
And it kind of made it a little difficult to get out. So the last two or three millimeters is something that we had to fight a little bit for,
figure out where we can buy some space, and still make sure that, you know, things like the barb on the end here
have enough meat to hold on to this guy when we press it on.
You can imagine there's, you know, that's all that we have holding on there. So we got to make sure we have the right dimensions there
to make sure everything's pressing in and holding tight.
Another big change that we worked on since last time we talked, previously we were just looking at a standard smooth shaft on the end.
We're doing some testing and we kind of found if you're kind of choked up tight
and you're trying to turn the screwdriver there and you're,
let's say you're choked up right against the surface, it can be a little slippery.
So we're actually doing some testing and adding that same sharp knurling
that we have on the full-size screwdriver. We basically slapped that same diamond knurling on the tip of the stubby.
And that way, if you're choked up real tight, you need to get started with a screw or something like that.
You just get a little bit more grip. You're not slipping around on the shaft there.
Look what we got. These are the handles. We did a trip to pH molds yesterday and we got some samples of the last part
we're waiting for for the stubby screwdriver. So we got all of these sample handle shots.
Oh wow. And you can see in here, we even have our first official real stubby.
So this is the first one we built with all injection molded parts.
Wow. The handles, the last guy that we picked up yesterday.
So now we got this big box of parts. We're doing some last sample testing, last prototypes.
Make sure everything's good to go. And then see if we can get a box of these ready to get into everyone's hands at LTX.
So this right here is what you'll be able to expect when you buy one.
Exactly. So this is basically what it's going to look like when we order it.
I think we're doing the orange and black with the silver shaft
and the black and black with the silver shaft.
I think we may also be doing a limited run of orange and black end caps with the black shaft.
So that might be something to look out for. I think we still have some last technical details to work out and see if we're going to make that happen.
But I think we might have some for the black shaft fans out there.
So walk me through why this took a little bit longer.
Yeah. So there's a couple of rounds of back and forth for all of these different parts that were injection molding.
So the last mold we were waiting for were these handles.
So we went by yesterday to our injection molder, picked up obviously this sample batch,
but they were pointing out some things that you basically don't know until you start shooting some mold,
some little intricacies of what makes injection molding such an art.
So one of the things they pointed out yesterday and they provided us with some samples here that they have labeled,
because as you can see with this part here,
so in the injection molding machine, the plastic gets shot into a nozzle on this end.
This is called the sprue. It hits the runner system, it spreads out, and then these two parts are made out of one injection.
So obviously with one shot coming in, the plastic is injecting here,
and then it's splitting out into two different handles.
They were noticing some basically balance issues with how the plastic were flowing into the two halves.
So you can see here they did a little bit of a circle.
We have some marks that are showing up in the final part.
This one they were saying is a result of some gas getting trapped in the mold,
and that's because this particular mold on the first test,
for some reason one of the halves of this mold, so one of the handles is filling a little bit faster than the other one,
and that's just causing an imbalance in the way the plastic flows through.
So they were actually able to work through troubleshooting that a little bit for us because
our partners know that we're trying to get everything out to you guys for LTX,
so we found a workaround here, and they provided a sample of that as well.
You can see here they labeled this a workaround.
So rather than changing the mold for this batch, they actually just changed the parameters for how they're running the injection molding machine.
That helps get rid of the mark that we were seeing, so you can see here they're not circling anything,
we've got these really almost invisible parting lines as you wear the two parts of the mold separate.
But the trade off for that is that this shot with these modified parameters to make those marks go away
takes a little bit longer to shoot. So obviously that means if you're taking longer to shoot your handles,
you can't produce parts as fast, and at the end of the day that means somebody is incurring some cost somewhere.
So I think right now the plan is we're going to try and get this workaround running
for a smaller number than our initial original order,
get some parts out so everybody can get some on hand for LTX for the initial release,
and then once we get a first run going,
then we're going to see if we can find a workaround that actually modifies the mold a little bit to solve that problem.
Can we see a little bit of how the stubby screwdriver actually looks?
Yeah, for sure. So if you remember last time I think we were looking at this prototype guy,
so we were looking at pretty much still everything injection molded except our handle was still out of our SLS nylon machine,
so that's a laser-centered nylon powder. So the last part that we picked up yesterday is this handle here.
So now we've got all parts injection molded, the same surface finish that we get on our large screwdriver,
so we're going to get the same sort of like a satin, semi-smooth, semi-shiny finish I guess.
And I think we mentioned in our last update, we did decide to go with a knurled shaft there,
so in case you need to do a little bit of tightening directly using the shaft,
you get a little bit more grip there. How do you think it came out?
I think it turned out great. I think it feels really good.
The handle was the last part that we're waiting for and obviously it's one of the biggest parts you look at,
the biggest part you feel when you're using the screwdriver.
So Kyle and I did a stop-by yesterday and we were super stoked with how this came out.
The finish is really good. I think I was mentioning here, you can see these lines, you can barely see it.
That's actually where the two halves of the mold separate, so one on that side, one on this side.
Our mold makers that we're working with do a really good job making that almost invisible.
You can barely feel it when you run your finger over, you're going to feel a little bit.
That's kind of the nature of injection molded plastic.
But yeah, this came out really good.
So we're doing this. Obviously with the test, we're doing some last-minute checking to make sure we're going to build a handful more of these.
Make sure when we press this ratchet assembly, it actually presses into the hole on the end of the screwdriver here.
So that is a press fit. If you guys have seen the video where we explained how we build our standard screwdriver,
I think Linus and Kyle are actually at pH molds where they're shooting the handles and then pressing in that ratchet assembly.
This is the same idea, just everything's a little bit smaller.
So we're making sure that this dimension here, when we press that ratchet assembly in there, it stays nice and tight.
It stays connected properly for the life of the screwdriver.
So we're looking all good to launch for LTX? Yeah, we're looking pretty good.
We're doing a last set of measurements, obviously.
We picked these up yesterday, so there's still a couple of days of testing to go.
But all signs look like we're going to get a batch of these out for LTX.