GRIPsher - The Formidable Compact Multi-Tool

MIM Tooling feedback and more!
about 9 years ago – Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 06:22:48 PM

Hey everyone,

For this week's update, we have been receiving a lot of positive feedback on the MIM tooling. We have included some photos below to show how we view some of the feedback with various MIM features demonstrated!

Pictured above are:

- Ejector pin locations (how the part will be removed from the mold)

- Gate locations (where material will flow into the part)

- General Mold layout

When will GRIPsher ship?

While there should be no concern that the GRIPsher will 100% ship, it has become clear GRIPshers will not ship this month.  Pending the MIM tooling design being complete in the next week or two, it should take a few weeks for the tooling to be machined and the first samples shot.  Pending the samples not requiring any kind of changes, it will just come down to verifying the assembly procedure. With all that being said, the best estimate we can give now is two to four months.  Rest assured, progress is always moving in the forward direction and we are well within budget!  

Why was there a delay for GRIPsher?

While we haven't run into any unsolvable problems, molding feedback has had more of a time lag than we would have liked. The process for feedback usually starts with either us or our manufacturer discovering a potential problem, discussing how to correct it, modifying the part CAD, applying the changes to the mold (which is the negative of the part itself) and then verifying the changes.  As this has happened several times, the time to make the molds has been pushed back.     

It is exciting to see the molds being almost complete and we all look forward to the first production parts starting in a few weeks! Shoot us a message if you need any additional information and we will be happy to get back to you!

Team GRIPsher

Component Status Update!
about 9 years ago – Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 10:29:01 PM

Hey everyone!  For this update, we decided to break down our update into individual components for more clarity.  While our schedule has been pushed back, there are still no problems or barriers from making and shipping GRIPshers, just making sure we deliver the highest quality product as possible!  Our current stage of development involves both feedback (a lot of back and forth with our manufacturer to ensure parts all mold the way we expect them to) as well as sourcing various hardware. Below is more detail from each category.

Injection Molding (Jaws)

The injection molded parts (Jaws) are essentially complete.  We are creating our final drawing, and have 1 minor change to make before approving the mold.  The mold steel is being purchased and will be ready to begin being cut in about a week.

MIM Tooling (Metal Parts)

For our MIM tooling, we are still in the process of refining our original model and the mold itself.  MIM tooling is much more complicated as the parts produced are in a green state with a binder and the 17-4 Stainless Steel powder.  This binder must be removed as the part is sintered before reaching its final appearance and size.  These should be finished and approved in 2-3 weeks.

Bolts, Nuts, and other Hardware

We have begun sourcing the major hardware components and accessories needed to produce GRIPshers (nuts and bolts).  This is an ongoing task and will be completed in the next month.  Additionally, we are working on the assembly process (as GRIPshers do require a degree of precision assembly).

As always, if there is any other questions or clarification you would like, do not hesitate to leave a comment or send us a message!

Team GRIPsher

Mold Making Progress
about 9 years ago – Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 02:47:42 PM

Hey everyone!

We have been hard at work finishing the molds!  The injection molding ones (for the jaws) are nearly complete and pictured below!  We are still working on finishing up a few little details for the Metal molds but progress is continuing very well.  

The mold above contains several features in it to better aid in achieving the desired design and produce 4 jaws in a single cycle. If you interested in reading more, Protolabs has a great website to learn more about the process behind injection molding.

With Chinese New Year complete, we will now begin to post updates weekly to keep our backers as close to the information as possible.

As for a timeline of shipping, once the molds are all finalized and being cut, we can provide a better estimate of delivery time.  As of now, we are working very well with our manufacturer and see no reason not to be moving forward smoothly.  As we said in our original campaign, quality will always have the utmost priority as we continue to make GRIPshers. As always, contact us directly with any questions!

Team GRIPsher

Titanium GRIPsher and The other New Year!
about 9 years ago – Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 07:24:25 PM

Happy Monday to all!

We are proud to have finished the machining, inspection, and final touches on the GRIPsher Executive, made out of Titanium.  They look great and are very lightweight. These parts were all individually machined (using a combination of Wire Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) and CNC machining.  

As for our production tooling, our manufacturer is taking off for the Chinese new year and will be back in the office on Feb 7th when we will resume our molding feedback process.  This, while it may seem like a long process, is absolutely critical to ensure quality GRIPshers are made (as each mold could, potentially be producing more than 100,000 parts each). Extremely attentive feedback and simulation will ensure that we reduce the time necessary to inspect, modify, and approve the first runs with the mold itself.

For future updates, we will try to, using a combination of links and graphics, provide reading materials for anyone who is interested in the process behind making these items as it is extremely interesting to learn more about and Metal Injection Molding (MIM) in general.

As always, continue to share the word with your friends and message us any questions you may have!

Team GRIPsher

Happy new year!
about 9 years ago – Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 07:35:33 PM

Hey everyone, we hope you all had a good holiday season and set some reasonable goals for the upcoming year!

GRIPsher moving into production is continuing to go smoothly.  The past two weeks has continued to involve getting feedback from our manufacturer who will be making the individual parts out of stainless steel (as these will have the longest lead time of the parts as a whole). At this point, this is mostly involved with ironing out smaller details like corner sizes and locations of molding features.  We are being very thorough during this step to ensure that the molds are well made, designed, and laid out.  Our goal is to give the go ahead to these before the Chinese new year begins at the end of the month.  

Our Titanium version is almost finished machining and should be moving to inspection and assembly in the next week or two.

Due to the holidays (American in the past week or so and the Chinese New Year at the end of January), progress will not be as quick for the next few weeks but is continuing to move forward at a very good pace.  As we said from the beginning, we will always provide up to date communication here so there will be no surprises as when to expect GRIPsher.  

As always, shoot us a message if you have any comments or concerns!