ArduCopter factory updates..
Jordi showed his electronic 3D Robotics facilities some weeks ago and Chris posted some more after he visited there, now It's time to give quick look on how Fah Pah Electornics facilities looks like and where the magic happens for ArduCopter frames and other parts.
Small history about early dates and today: Earlier Beta frames were made in smaller scale and without proper production facilities on my friends office but now that we are doing them in a bigger scale and we want to provide good and reliable service to all DIY Drones customers, we needed to have proper production and storage area. So me and my partner created another division under Fah Pah Elecronics Co., Ltd. (Btw. Fah Pah means Thunder/Lightning in Thai language).
We had a possibility to get another office area from same building where main office is, so we got it and did move all Drone/UAV production/packing/shipping there. Also to make life a lot easier on people on main office where all electronics design and assembly is done, I was driving them crazy running CNC's all day long.
And now finally we can start show how things looks like and where the magic happens. There are another factory that does all fiberglass/polycarbonate parts for us. On this area we make all smaller parts and packing/testing/shipping.
Picture: 3 weeks ago when first furnitures started to arrive:
Because we were in hurry to get production up and running so people can start flying their ArduCopters as soon as possible, we created temporary walls around CNC machines to keep voice down.
Picture: CNC cuting room where all small parts are made. Even tho there are automated machines, a lot of hand work is done to get them ready
There are now 3 table size heavy duty CNC machines running constantly and doing various parts. Covers are still missing around CNC routers so it's rather noisy room when all three are running at full speed.
Material size that we can use on those is 30 x 60 x 7 cm and they cut even 3 cm stainless steel.
(Mr. PIK examining cut quality on motormounts or something else parts)
Other tools that we do have is milling machine, grinding machines and polishing machines. Plans are to have few more tools to help on some production issues. Like belt saw, air compressor etc.
Picture: Preprocessor software for CNC routers, Mach3
Softwares that we are using on production floor are:
- Mach3 - CNC processing
- ArtCAM - CAD/CAM drawing and design
- Cut2D - CAD/CAM drawing and design, mainly for importing simple customer drawings
Picture: Storage shelfs are starting to get populated (filling up more every day)
Picture: Closeup for motors and other parts for ArduCopters
Picture: Packing are is used to unpack nuts/screws and propeller shipment that arrived today (16th of Nov)
Picture: People always says that it's hard to find CW & CCW propellers, not anymore.. We have them now and more will come :)
Video: Last but not least... Quick video tour to production floor. (Watchout, loud noises)
There are still many things to do before shipping will start, but it is close only few items are missing and they should arrive this week Thursday.
Many things are still looking their places on this production floor and many issues still needs to be resolved but over all it's looking rather ok.
If you have a good idea or needs, share it, maybe some one else has similar needs.. Also if you have special needs, just ask and we can look what we can do.
Few more picture will come after packing has started to show how new packets and contents will look. Not any major changes on beta frames but still :)
Happy flying guys & gals...
and remember.. fly safe.
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3D Robotics Comment by Chris Anderson on November 16, 2010 at 11:08am -
I love factories! Great pics and vid, Jani--that's a very impressive operation.
Next step: get your workers some hearing protection ;-)
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Moderator Comment by Sgt Ric on November 16, 2010 at 11:08am -
Very impressive, best of luck with the business!
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JDrones Comment by Jani Hirvinen on November 16, 2010 at 11:16am -
Chris, yeah we already have some earplugs for people ;)
After we get those CNC's covered things should be nicer.. Tho sometimes you need to keep covers open anyways. It's about 85db when they run. There is a plans to get new spindles that are creating a lot less noise. I will be testing them in next following weeks after biggest rush is over. Don't want to mess with machines now when they are fully utilized :)
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Comment by Ersin Acar on November 16, 2010 at 11:49am -
when i saw the post i remembered something! i pre-ordered a HMC from fah-pah and still not shipped hehe :)
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JDrones Comment by Jani Hirvinen on November 16, 2010 at 12:00pm -
Yep that's why it's was on pre-order... We are also waiting them to arrive :)
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Comment by michel pet on November 16, 2010 at 12:45pm
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Comment by Bart on November 17, 2010 at 1:05am -
Nice to have a peek.
Can't wait for my pre-order to arrive...:-)
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Comment by Simone Chiaretta on November 17, 2010 at 2:44am -
I saw the production status page on the wiki says everything arrived (still some minor thing like boxes and box's stickers missing).
Can't wait for my arducopter to arrive. Did you manage to get the Magneto on time for the shipping of the copters?
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JDrones Comment by Jani Hirvinen on November 17, 2010 at 3:20am -
Yes basically all parts that we have been waiting are now arrived. Every table is full of ArduCopter parts :)
"missing" parts are produced every day with all 3 inhouse CNC routers, our outsourcing CNC company already delivered their parts for us. There are still few items missing like packing bags sizes X and Y and some other minor items but our motorcycle delivery guys are running around city to collecting those as we speak.
Final pack design has already started, it is based on earlier Beta frame packets so it is rather fast. Not any major changes, some parts mainly ending up on different bags and few bags will be joined as one but still it takes amazing amount of time to finalize those. From tomorrow onwards there will be few extra people helping on packing. If/when everything goes well, first boxes are out on this Friday.
As for the magnetometers, we should be able to ship those too, people who bought kit and added HMC's to it might only need to wait 2-3 extra days until we receive them. We first start shipping kits that are just normal standard kits. This is to clear up delivery queue. So there are great chance that we will get them too before first kit that includes it is ready to leave...
After first kits are ready I will post pictures/video of it's contents like I did earlier with Beta frames too..
Back to noisy room looking after production.. ;)
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Comment by Simone Chiaretta on November 17, 2010 at 3:24am
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Awesome... thank you for the update... eagerly waiting for my copter... with the magnetometer :)
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