Turing Tumble Progress Update #12: NY Toy Fair
about 6 years ago – Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 12:04:28 AM

We just got back from the best convention we’ve ever attended. It was fun, exciting and a bit overwhelming. We met people from all over the world and all walks of life: toy store owners, inventors, manufacturers, press, distributors, sales reps, publishers, and (most importantly!) some of our Kickstarter backers. Turing Tumble was received with a LOT of enthusiasm.  

(In case you are noticing a different voice in this update, you are right! It is me, Alyssa, writing the update this time. Toy Fair highlighted my role in our company more than I expected. We both do a wide variety of tasks, but I have been handling more of the business relationships and that was a big part of our trip, so we decided I should be the one to tell about it.)

Before the main Toy Fair starts, there is a “product preview” day. That’s where someone from each company pitches their toys to representatives of the Toy Association so that they can see what might interest the press throughout the week. The preview got us off to an amazing start. Turing Tumble was chosen to be highlighted in a presentation on toy trends that was attended by about 300 people. A presenter spent time with Paul learning all about it and then on Sunday it was highlighted as one of the trends in the learning toys category. We were really proud to see it on the stage alongside LEGO, Mattel and Hasbro products.

The first day was really fun, but overwhelming. Our booth was hopping and the four of us were pretty much busy all day. I was apprehensive leading up to Toy Fair because I had corresponded with many people, and I wasn’t sure I’d know what I was looking for in the face to face interactions. I also wondered if I would be able to hold my own as I’m totally new to business, save for the couple books I’ve read and some friends who have generously answered my questions. My apprehension was warranted. It was incredibly hard to distinguish good business opportunities from not such good ones.

After some insights from an industry veteran and mulling it over, I had a clearer head and went into day two with a list of the business opportunities I wanted to solidify: 1. Companies that have toy catalogs that catered to more educational products, 2. A few international distributors and 3. Buyers for toy stores. The list helped me prioritize and gave me clarity as I met new people. By the end of the show we had solidified some plans and brought home three notebooks full of leads!

One thing I didn’t expect was the number of people who seemed fishy. Some would avoid answering questions, some would promise you the moon, and others just used a lot of confusing acronyms and name dropping. Some walked up to the booth with their name tag flipped around and you couldn’t tell right away if they were trying to remain anonymous because they held a high position or if they were trying to get by with something. Going into Toy Fair someone advised us to treat everyone the same. We stuck to that for the most part…except when that guy from The Tonight Show stopped by. After I showed him the binary demonstration he told me our game was “smart Plinko”. I sure hope he tells Jimmy Fallon about it!

One of the highlights of Toy Fair was Paul being interviewed by Make48, a show on PBS where teams compete to develop a new commercial product idea in a 48 hour invent-a-thon weekend. Bob Coulstron, the host, is a Kickstarter creator and enthusiast who followed our campaign. Some part of the interview will be aired in season two of their show this fall.

We are so grateful that we got to be a part of Toy Fair 2018. Thank you for believing in us from the beginning! It was intimidating to introduce it to the retail market, but with the support of all of you, we felt very confident. It says a lot to buyers that 4,198 people wanted the product when it was just a prototype.

Production of the plastic parts begins the first week of March. Next time you hear from us, Paul will be home from China with news on how the production is going!

Our sincere thanks,

Alyssa and Paul

Here are some additional pictures: 

Turing Tumble Progress Update #11: We are in Production!!!
over 6 years ago – Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 12:32:07 AM

That's right! We are IN PRODUCTION! I can't tell you all how good it feels to say that.

More precisely, I should say we are now all the way in production. We actually began production of the box, the book, the vacuum trays, and all the other non-plastic parts a little over a week ago. But now, every part of the game is ready to go.

Before I tell you the story, let me start by saying that since we have finally entered into production, we're going to charge credit cards for add-ons and pre-orders. So please make sure the credit card you used on BackerKit is current. We'll charge them all for any add-ons and pre-orders tomorrow.

Since the 3rd round of plastic parts...

You might remember the third round of plastic parts had a few serious problems. The biggest problem had to do with the ramps: the hole in the center was cut too small, making them not quite fit onto the pins on the board anymore. Since it's not possible to add metal to a mold (to make the holes bigger) it looked like we might have to remake the mold, delaying things even more.  

Speaking of molds, I thought you might appreciate seeing some pictures of the injection molds. I asked Sky (you'll hear more about him later) to take pictures of the molds while he was at the factory. Here's one of the molds:

This is called a "family mold" because it makes several different types of parts in one shot. Notice how there are multiple cavities for some parts. That way, they can make all the parts needed for one copy of the game in a single shot.

At first glance, the mold seems pretty simple, but they are surprisingly complicated. I found a great video on YouTube that explains more about injection molds. It's definitely worth the 10 minutes to watch it.

Here's another one of the molds:

See those shiny circles on each of the gear teeth? Those are actually pins that run all the way through the mold to the outside. They're called "ejector pins". After plastic has been injected into the mold and it's cooled, the mold is pulled apart, and those pins are pushed forward to pop the part out of the mold.

On the other side of the mold, you can see little dots sticking up on each of the gear teeth. They actually added those little pins after the first round to help reduce "sink" in the plastic when it cooled (more on that later).

The ramps were also made in an 8 cavity mold like the one pictured above. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of mold for the ramps. The problem was that the pins sticking out of the mold (that formed holes through the ramps) were all too small.

And here is where our hero enters. Sky is the name of our engineer at LongPack and he really stepped up. First, he spent a long time trying various approaches to solve the problem without making drastic (risky) changes to the mold. He was able to get 5 of the 8 cavities to work that way, which was good, but not good enough. So he decided to make one last-ditch attempt to fix the problem. If it failed, they'd have to remake the whole mold.

He attempted to cut out the little pins in the center of each of the ramps, and then replace them with new, slightly larger pins. I'm no machinist, but this seems extremely difficult to me. The pins he cut out looked a lot like this pin:

Cutting the pins out without damaging the surrounding metal seems difficult enough, but then somehow attaching a new pin in the correct position at the base of the hole seems ridiculously hard. And they had to get it perfect all 16 times (8 pins on one half of the mold and 8 pins on the other half).

The 4th round of plastic parts

Well, they did their best, and this morning I got the 4th round of plastic parts from LongPack, including the new ramps.

I opened up the box...

The Ramps

The very first things I tried out were the new ramps:

Along with the ramps, LongPack sent two sizes of counterweights for the ramps: 6.1 mm balls and 6.35 mm balls. They thought it might be worth trying out both sizes because they found in some cases it was more reliable with the 6.1 mm balls. In the following video, the ramps on the left side have 6.1 mm balls and the ramps on the right side have 6.35 mm balls:

First of all, YES!! The ramps work! The holes are just the right size now. Problem solved, and we didn't have to re-make the mold.

As for the counterweights, I'm planning to stick with the 6.35 mm counterweights because the balls move down in a slower, more controlled way, and I haven't run into any problems with their reliability, yet. 

Balance

Last time, we also had an issue with the balance of the ball release system. It needed a little more weight on one side to work 100% correctly. Unfortunately, adding that weight is not as easy as just adding a hunk of plastic to the mold. If you have too much plastic in one place, the inside cools slowly and the outside cools quickly, causing the inside to shrink more than the outside, leaving sunken spots on the surface of the plastic or worse, big voids. That's actually the main reason that the plastic stuff you buy isn't ever solid plastic, it's always made of thin walls with ribs - that way everything cools (and shrinks) at roughly the same rate.

To solve the balance problem, LongPack had the idea of sticking a washer that weighs just the right amount behind each of the levers at the bottom of the board. Here's a picture of the levers with and without the washer in place:

The washer solves the problem perfectly.

Production

So that's it, everything works (even better than in the prototype), and now we're in production! The plan is to begin the actual production of the plastic parts soon after workers return from Chinese New Year at the beginning of March. During the actual production of the plastic parts, which will take about a week, I'll fly out there and hopefully just be a fly on the wall, checking once in a while to make sure the quality control procedures are working. I'll be sure to take a lot of pictures of the factory and the process to share with you all.

I guess there will be little progress in manufacturing over the next month with Chinese New Year almost upon us, but one exciting thing is that in a couple weeks we'll be attending the New York Toy Fair! I guess it'll kinda be like Kickstarter 2.0, but for retail stores and distributors...and it's 4 days long instead of 30. We've been working hard on our booth the last couple months and today we finally loaded it onto a truck bound for New York. We are anxious and excited!

Also, thanks so much for your patience and words of encouragement. The molds took WAY longer than I expected to finalize, but we really appreciate how encouraging you all have been. It made a big difference for us.

Your friends,

Paul and Alyssa

Turing Tumble Progress Update #10: The Third Sample
over 6 years ago – Tue, Jan 09, 2018 at 12:43:26 AM

Hello friends,

On Tuesday, our third sample arrived. It took longer than we expected, partly because it took a while to find the right solution to the problem we had with the gear bits and partly because the changes to the ramp mold were tricky. I'll show your our solution to that later.

This was the big one. The parts should be colored correctly, textured, and the final problems we had with the last sample should be solved. Alyssa and I opened the box.

The game box had a new matte laminate coating, so there were no scuffs on the back of the box like last time:

And inside the box, the parts were indeed colored correctly. Here is the top tray with the board supports.

The board supports were black (as they should be) and the tray itself was made correctly. It has a nice, quality feel now.

Lift that top tray out of the box and you find the rest of the parts:

This will be more or less how it's packaged in production. There are only 10 ramps in the box there, but there will be 30 in the actual game, which will fill up that tray on the right side. And colors! Did you notice the beautiful colors? We were getting a little tired of working with dirty white and gray parts. That was refreshing.

Problems solved

Last time there were some important problems, and we hoped to solve them all with this sample.

Gears and Gear Bits

If you remember last time, we had a problem with the gear bits as a result of the low friction. When 3 or more gear bits were connected together, they worked perfectly, but when only two gear bits were connected together, they'd flip so fast that they'd bounce back the other direction. 

We thought long and hard about how to solve this problem. It was actually Cy from LongPack that came up with the best solution. His idea was to add washers behind the gear bits that add friction. The next day I went to the hardware store, picked up some rubber washers, placed them behind the gear bits, and viola! They slowed down the gear bits enough that they worked when only two were connected together! LongPack then sourced better looking washers. We'll include 10 of them with this version of the game. Here's what they look like:

So from now on, whenever 2 gear bits are connected, the washers must be placed behind the gear bits, but whenever 3 or more are connected, you don't need to bother with them.

The Computer Board

Remember last time, in the video, how a ball got stuck in that space under the lever? There was also an issue where the balls would sometimes roll on top of the levers to places they shouldn't be. Both of those problems are solved. I added little protrusions that stop those two things from happening:

Crossovers

Last time the crossovers sometimes fell off the board. Adding dimples to the smiles solved that problem:

Standoffs

Last time they forgot to add the lip that made it snap into the other pieces. This time it was there and it snaps nicely.

Remaining Problems

The Computer Board

Just one problem remains with the computer board: the factory still didn't remove all the extra plastic at the "parting line" (i.e., the place where the two halves of the mold come together). Here's an example of a hole with extra plastic where it shouldn't be:

They say this is an easy problem to solve, and that it will be completely fixed next time.

New Problems

It was great to see the old problems solved, but we were surprised and more than a little disappointed to find some new problems.

The Bit

I took a bit and tried to put it on the board, and...it didn't fit! The hole was too small, which was strange since I didn't ask for any changes to that part. I asked LongPack about it and they said that the molders used a different temperature when they molded them this time, and as a result, the bits shrunk more than they should have.

This problem should be an easy fix, but it worries me. If this kind of thing happened during production, it would be disastrous. I'm preparing a list of quality control tests for the molders so that this kind of thing doesn't ever happen again.

The Levers

Like the bits, somehow the hole for the presser shrunk. 

The presser doesn't fit all the way in anymore. LongPack is looking into why this happened. Hopefully it is the same problem as the bits, and can easily be solved by changing the molding conditions.

The Ball Release System

The balance in the ball release system was slightly different this time. It caused the levers to only rise about halfway up after being pushed down. To solve the problem for good, we'll need to add between 0.5 g and 1 g of plastic to the side of the lever with the counterweight in it.

The Ramps

This is the most challenging problem. You might remember that last time we made some changes to the ramps to stop them from jumping off the board. The changes solved that problem, but in the process of making those changes, the hole in the ramp (where it fits onto the pins) was accidentally cut smaller.

With injection molding, it's relatively easy to add plastic to an existing part because it just means cutting away more of the metal in the mold. But you can't subtract plastic in most situations because you can't add metal to the mold. So when a hole is cut too small, you either figure out how to make it work or you remake the mold.

Remaking the mold would take a significant amount of time. It's not our first choice. Fortunately the hole is still big enough that it fits over most of the pins. We think we can make some changes that will allow the existing ramp work for the rest of the pins. LongPack is making a first attempt at those changes today and they'll have a sample to test tomorrow.

The silver lining is that the smaller holes slow the ramps way down. In the previous videos you might remember the balls shooting through the ramps. Now I think the speed is just right.

We were able to make the ramps work in the above video (even though the holes are smaller than we'd like) by adding thin plastic washers behind the ramps. It lifted them up to a part of the pins that is slightly thinner.

Timing Update

So far, each round of changes has taken about one month to complete, so I think it would be safe to say that these changes will be complete at the beginning of February. Unfortunately that's also when Chinese New Year begins. So if these changes are truly the final changes, the new schedule looks roughly like this:

Feb 1: Final changes to the injection molds are complete. Production begins.

Feb 7: China starts shutting down for Chinese New Year

Mar 1: Workers return from Chinese New Year.

April 1: Production is complete. The games are loaded onto shipping boats.

May 1: The boats arrive and order fulfillment begins.

May 30: Order fulfillment is complete.

Thanks for sticking with us, everyone. It was discouraging to get this version of the plastic parts and still find significant problems. We're getting mighty close, though. We'll keep you posted on how this next (and hopefully final) round goes.

Thanks again,

Paul and Alyssa Boswell

Turing Tumble Progress Update #9: The Second Sample
over 6 years ago – Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 12:28:59 AM

Happy Holidays!

There's a lot to cover in this update. I'll start by walking you through the second iteration of the plastic parts that arrived on Monday. Then I'll explain the next steps and timing, there's an update on the Virtual Pack, and I'll save some juicy technical details for the end.

The Second Sample 

It took significantly longer than expected to receive the second iteration of the plastic parts, but they finally arrived on Monday. We had about 50 things for LongPack to fix from the last sample. We were more than a little anxious, particularly about the ball release system. Last time it released multiple balls at a time. With our changes, would it work reliably this time? 

The ultra-low friction of these injection molded parts is a blessing and a curse. I'm not sure how you can model their behavior before you make injection molds. CNC milled parts get you close, but not all the way there.

The package arrived on Monday afternoon:

It came in one of the old magnet boxes - this round was just to test the plastic parts, not the box. We'll get a final sample of the box in the next round.

And here's the board. Last time, remember how there was too much warp? The molders made a tool that puts pressure on the board immediately after it's molded to reduce the warp. You can see there still is warp there, but it does appear to be reduced. Also, remember the parts aren't made in their final color. They just used whatever plastic was already in the machine.

I took the board out and tried to put it together, but ran into the first problem right away:

It's missing a lip on the bottom that makes it snap into the other parts. Here's how it's supposed to look:

LongPack will fix that in the next round. In the meantime, I used my CNC milled standoffs to put the board the rest of the way together.

If you remember last time, the parts were really loose on the pins and wiggled around too much. This time they fit just right. Not too tight, not too loose. Also, it turns out the warp was reduced just enough to not cause any problems. It doesn't interfere with the board's operation anymore.

I put some parts on the board, held my breath, and ran it for the first time. Here's what happened:

The ball release mechanism worked! The crossover worked! The ramps worked!

Er...until a ramp fell off the board. In the video, I said that the ramps must still be too loose, but that actually isn't quite the problem. I spent a long time yesterday taking slow motion videos and trying to figure out what's really happening. It's a more complicated problem, but I figured it out and it should be fixed in the next round. I'll explain the problem and the fix for anyone who's interested in the technical details section below.

Then I tried a different setup involving bits. Last time, I couldn't even test the bits because the molders forgot to cut a section out of the arrow on top that's critical for them to function:

They worked perfectly! But what on Earth happened on the bottom? I've never had a ball get stuck there before. After messing around more with the board, I found that it happens only rarely, but frequently enough that I'll see if we can make a modification to stop that from happening.

So, as it stands:

The Board: The ball release mechanism works reliably, the parts fit well and turn smoothly. The warp is still there, but it doesn't interfere with its operation. We'll see if we can fix that rare problem where a ball gets trapped under one of the levers.

Ramps: Every once in a while they fall off the board, but they should be ok in the next round after a few changes (see Technical Details section below).

Crossovers: Every once in a while they fall off the board, but they should be ok in the next round after a small change (see Technical Details section below).

Bits: Good to go.

Interceptors: No problems, but this was a pretty easy one. :)

Gears: Perfect.

Gear bits: Last time there was a lot of sink near the teeth of the gear - so much that it left voids in the plastic. I made a modification to the part, adding little indentations in the places where the plastic was thickest, and it seems to have solved the problem. No more sink!

But, like I said before, the lower friction is both a blessing and a curse. It means we can connect 6+ gear bits together in a line and a single ball can flip them all. But it also means that if only two gear bits are connected together, they flip too fast. Sometimes that means they bounce back the other way a little, which can mess up the operation of the computer.

I'm not sure that's a problem we'll be able to fix without making some serious modifications to the part. And anything we do to make it work with two gear bits would make it stop working with larger numbers of gear bits. Fortunately, there's an easy way to make it work - if you only have two gear bits connected to each other, you can just add a third gear bit to the chain anywhere you want and it slows them down enough that they work reliably again.

Next Steps and Timing

Last time we had 50+ changes for LongPack to make. This time we have only 6 changes. We think there's a good chance everything will be ready to go in the next sample. So we asked LongPack to add the final texture to the parts and they're going to make them with the correct colors.

This last iteration took a lot longer than we expected. We were expecting 10 days and it took a little under a month. We were told the next iteration would take 5 days + 2 days for shipping, so if all goes well, we're hoping to get this into production next week or the week after that. If we begin production mid-December and production takes 4-5 weeks, we'll have the games on boats by the end of January. Unfortunately, that means our timeline is pushed back another month. Instead of February, we'll probably have the game in your hands some time in March.

The real key is to have our production finished before Chinese New Year begins. China shuts down for about a month starting a week into February. If we don't have it on a boat by then, it will be another month of delay while we wait for Chinese New Year to end. Fortunately, LongPack thinks there's a good change they'll be able to get it on a boat before then.

Virtual Pack Update

There was a request to add STP files to the virtual pack, not just STL files, so I created a new version of the virtual pack that includes the STP files. You can find it at the same link: https://turingtumble.backerkit.com/backer/digital_rewards

Also, if you haven't had a chance yet, take a look at community.turingtumble.com. jesusaurus has been working to make a version of the game that can be printed on home 3D printers. He cut up the board into 16 sections and posted the STL files so others can print them. It looks promising!

Technical details

I thought some of you might be interested in more details on two key problems with the parts and how we're going to solve them.

The problem with the ramps:

I thought I'd start by explaining why the ramps are falling off the board and how we're going to fix them. It's a riveting tale of momentum and friction.

The ramps fall off the board now because they can rock back and forth too much. See the picture below showing the top side of a ramp placed on the board and the direction of the rocking that's causing the problem:

Here's how it falls off the board: After the ramp is pushed down by a ball, the counterweight returns it back to its original position. It stops returning when the pin running through the "smile" hits the end of the smile. When the pin hits the end of the smile, the whole part rocks - in the above picture, it rocks so the left side of the ramp moves toward the board and the right side of the ramp (the side with the counterweight) moves away from the board. When the counterweight gets pushed away from the board, it sometimes gains enough momentum to push the whole part off the pin (or at least it pushes it way down close to the end of the pin so that the next ball to hit it knocks it off the board).

The 3D printed parts and the CNC milled parts don't come off the board because they are not as smooth and the extra friction stops the parts from sliding off the pin. I don't think there's a good way to add friction to our injection molded part, so we're going to solve the problem a different way.

Our solution:  

Right now, most of the ramp sits about 1 mm off the surface of the board due to the small, circular protrusion right here:

I put that protrusion there to reduce friction as the part turns. It used to help, but now it's the source of the problem. It acts like a fulcrum, and the part rocks back and forth over it. So to get rid of the rocking, we're going to remove the protrusions so that the parts sits flush against the board surface. If it sits flush against the surface of the board, it can't rock anymore. I tested this theory by sanding off the protrusions from a couple ramps and it did indeed solve the problem. We're also going to make the ramp slightly wider to keep it about the same width as it was with the protrusions. Here's a picture of the top of the ramp with those changes:

The problem with the crossovers:

Friction (or lack thereof) is once again the problem. In the case of the crossovers, the lack of friction makes it possible for crossovers to fall off the board when a ball hits them at just the right angle. Before, friction with the pin would keep them in place. Not anymore.

Our solution:

We're adding more material to the "smile" on the back of the crossovers. We're pretty sure this will stop them from being able to come off the board unless they are pulled straight off.

That's all for today. Hopefully we'll have another update for you next week or the week after that. If all goes well, the title will be "Turing Tumble Progress Update #10: We're in production!"

Thanks again,

Paul and Alyssa

Turing Tumble Progress Update #8: Virtual Pack Release
over 6 years ago – Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 12:13:44 AM

Friends,

I'll start with a quick update before we get to the Virtual Pack release.

1. Tonight we have a Skype meeting set up with LongPack to make sure they understand each of the fixes we requested and to get an update from them. We'll also find out how long it will take before we get the next iteration of the game. 

2. We're about to make the transition away from our Kickstarter page to an independent Turing Tumble website. I've been creating the site for the last month or so and it's getting close. (If you want a sneak peek, you can check out www.turingtumble.com/dev) We'll be looking for feedback when it's ready. I'm no expert on web development, so any sage advice you can give would be greatly appreciated.

The Virtual Pack

We've been excited about this day for a long time! Today we're finally releasing the Virtual Pack to those who got it as an add-on or as part of their reward. Initially we said we'd release the virtual pack when we go into production. Well we're not in production yet (though I think we're close), but we want to give you the chance to start making things with it now. Especially those of you who want to make the game for a holiday gift.

Community forum

To help us all in this endeavor, I created a forum so we can collaborate on our projects, share ideas, and show off what we've done. The forum is at community.turingtumble.com. I've already posted some things in the "Make It" topic to get us started.

For all you super-makers out there looking for something more difficult, I also added some challenges! The challenges describe problems we ran into that we've never been able to solve. For example, can you design that tilt-adjustable board stand? A better crossover? Longer-distance bit connections? There will be some sort of prize for those who figure out good solutions, but we haven't figured out what they will be just yet.

What's in the virtual pack?

You will get an email from BackerKit soon with a download link to the Virtual Pack. The virtual pack contains:

• Some basic instructions
• STL files for all of the plastic parts
• A pdf of the Turing Tumble puzzle book

Last night, Alyssa and I went back and forth on whether or not we should release the puzzle book. It will be important for some to have it (e.g., if it will be used to make a gift or to generate lesson plans), but we're afraid many of you will go through the puzzles now and spoil the experience for yourself. The game is way more fun when you have the physical game in front of you. But rather than keep the book from you, we decided to trust you and just say, in capital letters, 

DON'T LOOK AT THE BOOK EARLY UNLESS YOU NEED TO!
DON'T SPOIL IT FOR YOURSELF!

There. I hate to use uppercase like that, but it's for your own good. :)

Creative Commons license

We want you to be able to make cool things from our designs, remix them, and share them. Therefore, everything in the Virtual Pack is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.   

We’ve had companies tell us we’re crazy for releasing the source files for our game – that it makes it way too easy for people to copy the game and undercut our business. That could be true, but we think the benefits will outweigh the risk. We think people like you will be able to use these plans to make amazing things we would never dream up on our own. We also think it will be a great way to spread the word about Turing Tumble. So please, if you make something out of these plans, consider sharing it! Share it with us on the community page, on Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else you think people will appreciate it.

If you have a question about the legality of something you want to do, even if it conflicts with the Creative Commons license or is covered by our patent, don’t hesitate to ask us. We truly don’t want that to stop individuals from doing cool stuff. We’re nerds at heart and we're all about open-source projects.

Can't wait to see your creations!!!

Paul and Alyssa