Hi guys,
Well it's mid december now and I am getting polite e-mails asking after the status of the LunaSol 27. I have 45 of the LunaSol27 heads loaded with LED's and such and just needing the mother/ daughter converters to be added to complete the lights. The first completed batch of BBM (mother)converters which were re-worked fixing a component mix up came in to me early in the month and I had expected to be launching the wave last week. Some of the BBM's did not perform properly on the bench and I ended up testing 100% of them prior to mating them with the daughter boards and LED's. about 30% of them failed to perform as expected with 70% working as they should. This was an unexpected mortality rate and not satisfactory given the clean layout and solid design of the circuit.
Wayne put a bunch of time into evaluating the boards that weren't performing properly and identified a couple different components that were bad. The problem wasn't isolated to one specific component and the components that were bad are components that typically have no issue?!?! These components may have been bad off the reel but that would be a surprise. The suspicion is that for some reason, these converters were subjected to thermal or physical stress at some point, perhaps during the rework, which may have caused some components to fail. One LunaSol 27 that was assembled and performed properly, initially, later had the BBM converter fail after some use. The BBM is basically a Bad Boy circuit and this design has a long and succesful track record.
This first completed batch of BBM converters either got some bunk components loaded or the components were damaged in the assembly process. Wayne is trying to get some further information from the CM so we can get an idea of what happened here. In the mean time, although I have completed mother/daughter converter sets that perform on the bench, I am not comfortable installing them in the lights and sending them out. I have a few built up that are performing well and as expected but there is a shadow of doubt that we haven't been able to remove. Unless the CM can provide some insight into these existing boards and convince Wayne and me that there is no cause for concern, it looks like the plan will be to scrap the whole batch and move forward with a new batch to be made. This is most unfortunate but it is what it is.
I will be offering some Aleph McClickie-Mule sets here any day now. They will be complete and ready hosts for a Light Engine that you wil supply. I had planned to offer them up today actually but I ran out of one of the O-rings used in the head and the order I thought I had placed never happened.
I ended up having some shipped Red Label ($70 shipping to Hawaii 
) and got them two days ago.
My wife is over here with me at present and she had to come later than planned due to poor health of her parents (she needed to take them to Dr's) and some work she had to get taken care of. It's her birthday today which should be a joyous time but she got word yesterday eve that her mom passed away. Now there will be some quick changes in plans and holiday travel.
There is a bird with muddy feet landing on me and the keyboard demanding seed right now so I will finish up this update one handed.
Stay tuned and sorry about the delays.
Well it's mid december now and I am getting polite e-mails asking after the status of the LunaSol 27. I have 45 of the LunaSol27 heads loaded with LED's and such and just needing the mother/ daughter converters to be added to complete the lights. The first completed batch of BBM (mother)converters which were re-worked fixing a component mix up came in to me early in the month and I had expected to be launching the wave last week. Some of the BBM's did not perform properly on the bench and I ended up testing 100% of them prior to mating them with the daughter boards and LED's. about 30% of them failed to perform as expected with 70% working as they should. This was an unexpected mortality rate and not satisfactory given the clean layout and solid design of the circuit.
Wayne put a bunch of time into evaluating the boards that weren't performing properly and identified a couple different components that were bad. The problem wasn't isolated to one specific component and the components that were bad are components that typically have no issue?!?! These components may have been bad off the reel but that would be a surprise. The suspicion is that for some reason, these converters were subjected to thermal or physical stress at some point, perhaps during the rework, which may have caused some components to fail. One LunaSol 27 that was assembled and performed properly, initially, later had the BBM converter fail after some use. The BBM is basically a Bad Boy circuit and this design has a long and succesful track record.
This first completed batch of BBM converters either got some bunk components loaded or the components were damaged in the assembly process. Wayne is trying to get some further information from the CM so we can get an idea of what happened here. In the mean time, although I have completed mother/daughter converter sets that perform on the bench, I am not comfortable installing them in the lights and sending them out. I have a few built up that are performing well and as expected but there is a shadow of doubt that we haven't been able to remove. Unless the CM can provide some insight into these existing boards and convince Wayne and me that there is no cause for concern, it looks like the plan will be to scrap the whole batch and move forward with a new batch to be made. This is most unfortunate but it is what it is.
I will be offering some Aleph McClickie-Mule sets here any day now. They will be complete and ready hosts for a Light Engine that you wil supply. I had planned to offer them up today actually but I ran out of one of the O-rings used in the head and the order I thought I had placed never happened.
I ended up having some shipped Red Label ($70 shipping to Hawaii ) and got them two days ago. My wife is over here with me at present and she had to come later than planned due to poor health of her parents (she needed to take them to Dr's) and some work she had to get taken care of. It's her birthday today which should be a joyous time but she got word yesterday eve that her mom passed away. Now there will be some quick changes in plans and holiday travel.
There is a bird with muddy feet landing on me and the keyboard demanding seed right now so I will finish up this update one handed.
Stay tuned and sorry about the delays.
