October 2022 Production Updates

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Hey everyone, here are our Oct 2022 Production Updates.

For all news and updates, please see our Blog.

Just as a reminder, if you’d like to get these updates as a weekly email newsletter, please subscribe here: https://sienci.us13.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=720f140325aaa668a8aa09916&id=e18d59a085

Canadian Thanksgiving is coming up this month. Our offices will be closed Oct 7-10th.

Wow we are shipping LongMill orders by the pallet now!

LongMill MK2 and Extension Kit Orders

Production continues to move smoothly for all LongMill and Extension Kit orders. Most machines are shipping out within 1-2 weeks, and oftentimes sooner.

We are expecting to run out of the 1030mm lead screws that are used in various quantities between all sizes of the LongMill around the middle of October.

We have another partial batch expected to arrive at the end of the month, which means that shipping may be paused around this time. We will update our Order Status page with updated information if there is a shipping delay.

We expect lead times for machine orders to be around 1-2 weeks for the next few weeks before we update our lead times when we run out of lead screws.

A small piece of news to share, we have now switched completely to custom manufacturing v-wheels. This means more consistency, quality, and accuracy for the wheels in general, which have been historically a tricky point for us. The quality for the first 30,000 looks to be excellent so far.

LaserBeam Orders

We still have ready-to-go stock on LaserBeams. Most are getting shipped out within a few days.

Ikenna has been doing livestreams for working with the LaserBeam. If you haven’t checked it out yet, make sure visit our Youtube channel!

USD to CAD Exchange Rate

At the time of writing, the exchange rate for USD to CAD is 1 USD = 1.36 CAD. Because our base currency is in Canadian, this means that the exchange rate is heavily in favor of the Americans. That means that while the price for our products is basically the same for Canadians, our neighbors down South can purchase from us at a pretty significant discount.

Based on the reports that I’ve been receiving from RBC (Royal Bank of Canada), their projections are expected to see the USD to CAD conversion continue to be in favor of the USD for some time.

Because our base prices are all in CAD, this means that the margins for each machine decrease as the exchange rate changes in favor of the USD. Thankfully, because most of the material and production costs come in the local area, we are not as impacted as our competitors that have a higher percentage of materials coming from the US and overseas or US competitors selling into Canada. Additionally, much of the purchasing for Batch 7 was done when the exchange rate was around 1 USD = 1.26 CAD, a more favorable rate.

As the continuing economic turmoil continues, it will be interesting to see how us as a business will move forward.

The silver lining to this is that the small discount that our southern neighbors will be getting may stimulate more economic business in Canada.

September 30 – October 7, 2022 “A Project That is Autumn/Thanksgiving Themed” Contest Continued

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Happy fall, everyone! Thank you for participating in the contest for this week. We’ve seen many fun Autumn/Thanksgiving-themed creations and are delighted that you all are celebrating the fall season and Thanksgiving with us. We love seeing all the projects shared within the community.

Last Week’s Winners

We are happy to announce that JD Welch, Scott Hughes, Farm Road Designs, Norm Hawley, Mark Klement, and Andrew Morales are the winners of the “A Project That is Autumn/Thanksgiving-Themed” contest! Watch out for a prize coming your way!

This Week’s Theme: A Project That is Autumn/Thanksgiving Themed

A short message from our Content Creator, Scott Saari

We are continuing our Autumn/Thanksgiving theme for this week. Help us celebrate by posting any Autumn or Thanksgiving-related projects made with your LongMill, and we’ll choose our favourite projects to send awesome prizes to!

Weekly Themed Contest Guidelines and Rules

Happy crafting!

September 23 – September 30, 2022 “A Project That is Autumn/Thanksgiving Themed” Contest

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Happy Friday, everyone. We want to give a big thanks to the makers who participated in the contest for this week. There were many creative kitchen-related projects that amazed us. It was extremely hard to choose six of the best ones since all were crafted to perfection. We love seeing all the projects shared within our community.

Last Week’s Winners

We are excited to announce that Tony Boon, Morris Forbes, Carmine De Luca, Chris Smith, Michael Trickey, and Mosher Woodworking are the winners of the “A Project Made for the Kitchen” contest! Lookout for a prize!

This Week’s Theme: A Project That is Autumn/Thanksgiving Themed

A short message from our Content Creator, Scott Saari

Hey everyone, for our American neighbours, did you know that Canadian Thanksgiving is coming up soon? Help us celebrate by posting any Autumn or Thanksgiving-related projects made with your LongMill, and we’ll choose our favourite projects to send awesome prizes to!

Weekly Themed Contest Guidelines and Rules

Happy making!

“Remote Control/Headless” Feature in gSender Edge

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Hi everyone. If you’re a more adventurous CNC user, did you know that our experimental version of gSender includes a powerful Remote Control feature (sometimes referred to as headless) that can enable new functionality of your CNC within your shop?

You can load in a file from your design computer outside your shop and then run it on your computer inside the shop, use a tablet to control your CNC rather than a mouse and keyboard, use a phone for jogging or running functions, or leverage a mini PC or Raspberry Pi as the tethered computer for cheap, fanless, and reliable operation without taxing them with a display, keyboard, and mouse.

This feature is new so don’t expect it to be perfect, but try it out and give us feedback if you find anything we can do to improve it. Be sure you don’t use this feature to run your CNC remotely, we discourage unsafe use of the CNC including leaving it running unattended.

Follow our guide below to learn how to set up Remote Control using gSender Edge.

Remote Control Setup for gSender Edge

While you’re using Edge, try out and give us feedback on some of its other new features as well such as visualizing laser raster files, laser job outline, custom visualizer colours, and the ability to create a print of all your custom gSender keyboard shortcuts onto a piece of paper that you can hang up next to your machine. These features are easy to find and are also further explained on our release forum post here: https://forum.sienci.com/t/gsender-edge-headless-support-better-laser-support-custom-visualization-and-more/6291

September 16 – September 23, 2022 “A Project Made for the Kitchen” Contest

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Hi everyone. Thank you for participating in the contest for this week. We saw a lot of outstanding contest submissions for this week’s theme and are happy to see many makers participating. Choosing the winners for this theme was tough as all decorative projects were fantastic. We are glad to see all the projects shared within our community.

Last Week’s Winners

We are excited to announce that Merlin Dundas, Lydia Fitzpatrick, Jasper Tizon, Don Rideout, Kevin Medlin, and Devon Coles are the winners of the “A Project That Is Decorative” contest! A prize is on its way to you!

This Week’s Theme: A Project Made for the Kitchen

A short message from our Content Creator, Scott Saari

This week’s theme is “a project made for the kitchen”! Post your noodle boards, trays, cutting boards, charcuterie boards, and other kitchen-related projects that were made using the LongMill. We will select our favourite ones and send makers some awesome things.

Weekly Themed Contest Guidelines and Rules

Happy crafting everyone!

Stiffness and Deflection Testing on the LongMill MK2

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The LongMill MK2 is an exceptionally rigid machine. By optimizing the design, we’re able to build and design a capable machine at an affordable price.

It seems rare for CNC companies to share this sort of data and testing, so it’s difficult for consumers to be able to compare apples to apples on different hobby CNC machines. Hopefully, this is a good start for our industry to work towards bringing better, more rigid machines to the market.

Based on our results, a LongMill experiencing regular cutting forces of 10N, which we’ve determined to be representative of a normal cutting load on a hobby CNC machine, we see that the total deflection is under 0.1mm on both the X and Y axis. Given that 0.1mm is roughly the thickness of a sheet of paper, users should expect a very high level of accuracy for their machines.

We created these tests to show users that even though the LongMill is substantially less expensive than other hobby CNC options, it still offers a highly competitive level of rigidity and that customers are not missing out on something just because we’re so affordable.

Results:

(Tested at 10N)X Axis DeflectionY Axis Deflection
48×30 Longmill MK22.8 thou / 0.072mm3.2 thou / 0.080mm
30×30 Longmill MK22.3 thou / 0.057mm3.0 thou / 0.076mm
12×30 Longmill MK21.9 thou / 0.049mm3.0 thou / 0.076mm

We also did an additional run at 25N, the results are as follows.

(Tested at 25N)X Axis DeflectionY Axis Deflection
48×30 Longmill MK214.2 thou / 0.361mm20.7 thou / 0.525mm
30×30 Longmill MK212.3 thou / 0.313mm18.5 thou / 0.470mm
12×30 Longmill MK213.0 thou / 0.330mm18.2 thou / 0.461mm

For the full report, including my commentary, please read the report below.

Stiffness-Rating-with-CommentaryDownload

Raw data:

MK2-Deflection-TestingDownload

September 9 – September 16, 2022 “A Project That Is Decorative” Contest

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Good afternoon everyone. We want to thank those who participated in the contest this week. We know this theme was a little trickier than others, but all of you killed this contest! It was difficult for us to select the winners for this week as all non-wooden projects were crafted very well. We love seeing all the projects shared within our community.

Last Week’s Winners

We are happy to announce that Jack Maree, Kaleb Mannion, Stephen Zumbach, Kootenay Woodcraft, Nicolas Jacques, and Ron Klein are the winners of the “A Project That Isn’t Made From Wood” contest! Look out for a prize coming your way!

This Week’s Theme: A Project That Is Decorative

A short message from our Content Creator, Scott Saari

The theme of the week is “projects that are decorative”! Share with us something that you have created on the LongMill that was used to decorate your space. These projects include any wall art like signs, picture frames, wall carvings, figurines/statues, and other cool decorative items. We will choose our favourite decorative projects and send prizes to the creators!

Weekly Themed Contest Guidelines and Rules

Happy making!

September 2022 Production Updates

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Hey there, here’s our September 2022 production update.

For all news and updates, please see our Blog.

Just as a reminder, if you’d like to get these updates as a weekly email newsletter, please subscribe here: https://sienci.us13.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=720f140325aaa668a8aa09916&id=e18d59a085

Please note that we will be closed on Monday Sept 5, 2022 for Labour Day. We’ll be back in the office on Tuesday Sept 6, 2022.

Michael our QA engineer going through our latest batch of gantries

LongMill MK2 and Extension Kit Orders

Production continues to move fairly smoothly for all LongMill and Extension Kit orders. We have now cleared the pending queue for 48×30 and Extension kits and now lead times for all machine sizes will be more or less the same. We are expecting lead times to be around 1-2 weeks for most orders for this month.

This past month we did pause production shortly due to us running out of rail extrusions to make 48in X-axis rails, however, we have received another batch of rails that should cover for another 400-500 machines. Because we were working with our extrusion manufacturer to work out some kinks in the consistency of the rails, which placed the order on hold rather than going to press. Thankfully they were able to move the extrusions to the weekend schedule and have them made with only a few days of added delay.

X and Z gantries we also ran out as well have also been restocked. The next thing we’re expecting to run out of are the front and back steel feet for LongMill MK2 machines which we currently have 70 units worth left, however, those should be restocked back around the end of next week.

LaserBeam Orders

We are now stocked on enough LaserBeam units to last till the end of the year. Most are shipping out within a few days.

Batch 7 Production

We are now at the final third of Batch 6 Production. This means that we’re at our last 500ish machines, and we’ll be getting to the end of the batch sometime likely in December. Depending on the status of our shipments, our lead times may change around this time.

Batch 7 production has been underway for the last few months and we’ve been getting parts in to prepare. There won’t be any major changes but we’ve made some small tweaks to production overall including:

  • Small tweaks to the design of the 5mm to 8mm coupler to help customers identify which side goes on which side
  • Fully custom-produced v-wheels to improve quality control and consistency of the wheels

Some additional changes to our production reflected in Batch 6 and 7 include:

  • New tools to check the consistency of all of our rails
  • Additional checks to ensure the flatness of all gantry plates and other steel parts
  • Individual motor tuning on all control boards

When we started Batch 6 in 2021 and early 2022, we were at the height of the pandemic and supply chain constraints. Recently, we’ve seen lower lead times, shortages, and transport times than before, so we are hopeful that this new batch of machines will have a smoother production process than before.

Price increases from UPS

UPS has recently informed us that they will be charging an “Additional Handling Fee” on shipments weighing over 50lbs. Previously this limit was set to 70lbs. This means that some shipments on new orders may see roughly a $10 increase on LongMill shipping prices on new orders placed Sept 6. We are working with UPS to negotiate and reduce the impact of this charge.

September 2 – September 9, 2022 “A Project That Isn’t Made From Wood” Contest

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Hey everyone. We really appreciate those who participated in the contest this week. It was hard for us to choose the best useful household item projects since they were all so unique. We always look forward to seeing all the projects shared within our community.

Last Week’s Winners

We are excited to announce that John Fischer, Scott Nolen, The Wooden Board, Little Owl Craft Co, Michael Mascaro, and Academx Woodcraft are the winners of the “A Useful Household Item” contest! A prize is on its way to you!

P.S. We will be closed Monday, September 5th for Labour Day and back in the office on Tuesday, September 6th.

This Week’s Theme: A Project That Isn’t Made From Wood

A short message from our Content Creator, Scott Saari

Wood is obviously the most common material LongMill users use for making projects. Well, this week’s theme is “projects that aren’t made from wood”! Show us your projects that don’t use wood as their main material, like acrylic signs, brass brands, aluminum parts, and more, and we’ll choose our favourite ones and send the creators some free swag and bits!

Weekly Themed Contest Guidelines and Rules

Happy crafting everyone!

August 26 – September 2, 2022 “A Useful Household Item” Contest

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Hello everyone. We want to give our thanks to those who participated in the contest this week. We were so impressed with the projects you have sold that it was super difficult for us to choose the winners for this week. We are happy to see all the projects shared within our community.

Last Week’s Winners

We are excited to announce that Frank Stephenson, Knotty Hound, Kari Chapman, Dale Haché, John Hughes, and Kevin Ernst are the winners of the “A Project You Sold” contest! A reward is coming your way!

Here is an important business tip that Kari Chapman shared and could help you all succeed in your business. “Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. Putting yourself and your business out there is never easy – you won’t survive if you stay within your protected bubble. You have to pop that and seek out ideas and opportunities to grow as a business owner and to grow your business. Michael Dell once said, “if you’re the smartest person in the room, find another room.” This applies to your comfort zone as well. (*Mandy Edwards *35 Marketing Tips to Get [or Keep] Your Business Going, 2016).”

This Week’s Theme: A Useful Household Item

A short message from our Content Creator, Scott Saari

This week’s theme is “a useful household item”! Show us something you made with your LongMill that you can use around the house, such as catch-all trays, noodle boards, a piece of furniture, or anything else, and we’ll choose our favorites and the creators some awesomely cool stuff. Swipe to the last photo for more information on this week’s contest theme.

Weekly Themed Contest Rules and Guidelines: https://sienci-upgrade3.cospark.io/contest/ 

Happy making!