Tariffs, Production Update, a Makita Adapter Kit?
Happy Wednesday Everyone!
It was simultaneously a slow week and a crazy week for us.
On the slow side of things, our factory has still been closed for the CNY holiday. They will be re-opening on Monday which will let us jump right into packing and shipping the Maslow 4.1 kits. We think that we are still on track to get everything shipped this month.
We were also able to get the information on the ship carrying our 4.1 update kits across the ocean. They are aboard the ship Nordia (https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/details/9423035) which will arrive in Los Angeles to unload on the 12th which is next Wednesday.
Now on to the hectic side of things.
Tariffs:
As you’ve probably seen in the news the US has changed the rules around tariffs several times in the past week. The big change is an increase in tariffs on goods from China. We will be looking into what, if anything, we can do to help with tariffs in the short term.
Yesterday USPS announced that they will no longer be accepting packages from China (probably because they don’t have the administrative systems to deal with the new tariffs paperwork). This is a big problem for us because when Nordia reaches LA next week it was supposed to unload and hand off the packages to USPS to be delivered to you. We will find a solution probably using another carrier like FedEx or UPS.
Long term it probably means that prices will go up, but we will do our best to find ways to minimize that. The situation is still changing quickly, we will keep you updated.
Another issue which came up this week is that one of our injection molding factories which produces the spool part accidentally produced them using glass fiber reinforced polycarbonate, when they are supposed to be made from PC with no glass fibers.
The glass fibers make the parts very strong, but it also makes them slightly abrasive. This would cause them to wear out more quickly as they rotate.
Fortunately we were able to have the parts re-made by the factory quickly and since it was their mistake we were not charged for it which is nice.
They made the mistake, because we made some changes to the percentage of glass fiber added to several of the other parts in Maslow 4.1. We will be reducing the glass fiber content in the sled and router clamps which will make these parts more durable and less prone to cracking. The trade off is that we lose a little bit of rigidity, but in our testing of sample parts the reduction in rigidity is not significant, while the increase in durability is significant so we think it’s a great improvement.
Makita Adapter
Another thing that we’ve been working on this week is creating an official adapter to make Maslow 4 work with Makita style routers. These routers are cheaper and more widely available in 240 volt countries, and there are a myriad of knockoffs out there which can cost as little as $15 (which is crazy). Personally I prefer the DeWalt router because it runs cooler and has lights which are nice for seeing the cut, but we’d like to support more options.
A DeWalt router, next to a Makita router for scale. By adding a plastic sleeve, we can make the Makita the same size as the DeWalt allowing it to work with the Maslow kit
Our question to you is if we were to make and sell a Makita style router adapter kit for around $20 is that something that you would buy? The tooling to make the adapter will cost around $15,000 so it would be nice to know if it’s something folks would want before we commit to doing it.
Let us know your thoughts in the forums here!
That’s it for this week, have a great week everyone! Thanks for bearing with us while we sort out logistics challenges!
-Bar
