BreezeBlog

Components continued to arrive for our first SleepBreeze personal cooler last week – in spite of the Royal Mail postal strike. Our ever-cheery postman popped two tantalising packages through the front door. It’s fair to say that we don’t get that excited about the post most days. But when it’s something that you’ve put you heart and soul into for a couple of years, then maybe there’s good reason to be a little interested to see how they turned out.

So, what was in the packages? Well, the first package was from CorinTech and contained examples of our CE approved battery pack and mains power supply. This companct little battery pack has a lead and jack plug which slots straight into the cooler. Likewise, the mains power supply – this one destined for European customers – is similar to most mobile phone chargers. These power options allow the user to either use the cooler when out and about, for example in a tent. The mains unit is more for domestic use and can be used wherever there's a handy power socket and you want some air movement.

The second package was from our plastics experts, BEC Group, in New Milton. This contained two more components for the fan housing. As before, these were “first offs” from the new tool. More work needed to bring the surface finish up to scratch – forgive the pun – and to do final fit adjustments.

At last we could lay out the product to look something like it will be when, hopefully, you buy one.

Well done to all at Corintech and BEC. Nice work.

We’re still waiting for 2 more components to arrive – and to be honest one of these has proved more than a little awkward to make! However, the coming week will see more electronics assemblies arrive. And hopefully next week, fingers crossed, the last and most awkward component will appear in the post.

If it was easy, everyone would do it!

Following last week's component deliveries we're starting to get a clearer picture of how the gadget is going to look. Not just on paper - but for real!

At the same time we're still waiting for a couple of component prototypes for evaluation. The first is our electronics assembly - this is the heart of the cooler and is where the computer code sits that controls the gadget's various functions. It's also home to some of the safety layers built in to the design. The second component, sometimes referred to as "The Worm" and also "The Sock" has been causing us some headaches. How to make it without sacrificing performance, make it durable, make it affordable and how to clean it. Make it attractive! Well, fingers crossed we should find out this week if it can be done.

We then have to put all the components together and then make final adjustments to how these will fit together. Obviously this entails once more round the buoy to get a final working version. Safety testing comes directly after this. An independent lab takes some examples of the pre-production cooler and, for want of a better explanation, does their best to destroy them. From day one we emphasised to all our team that safety in the design comes first. The tests involve both electrical and mechanical testing. If all goes well, then we "press the button" on a manufacturing run.

Anything else? Hmm, well there's packaging to design, a user manual to write and illustrate, an online store to build, legal work, VAT returns, the accounts, marketing,... so no chance of adjourning to the golf course just yet. Just as well it never stops raining!

Last Tuesday saw winners of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Sustainable Business Awards gather at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton to receive their prize for success in this year's competition. The prize was a day of intense media training from Adam Kirtley - of BBC fame. Adam was there to train us in the ways of journalists and on how not to look or sound daft on TV.

"Right you lot," said Adam, "I'm going to yank you out one at a time and grill you." Gulp. How we squirmed! Eager reality TV show contestants we weren't. Of course, the difference was that each person was an expert on their subject and had something fascinating to say about their own businesses. Whether it was about the amazing Bio Bubble water treatment invention, Chocolate Craft of Alresford, or dare I say, about the SleepBreeze personal cooler. Each person did really well and Adam was full of constructive criticism. Considering media training yourself? You could do worse than a few lessons from Adam! And many many thanks to Stephen and Charlotte at Hampshire County Council's Sustainable Business Partnership for organising the event. Practical help for small businesses in the region. Nice one.

Chicago Tribune: After 4 years, electricity still luxury

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-electricity_jun25,1,5068598.story?page=2&coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

Whatever your views on the war this article in the Chicago Tribune by James Janega and Nadeem Majeed gives pause for thought. The main points in this fascinating article seem to be:

Reconstruction costs have drained the budget and the problem is still not fixed.
Fixing the Iraqi national grid isn't the greatest technical challenge. Fixing it under fire is!
Numerous planned power outages each day.
Entrepreneurial private suppliers are charging $12 per day to supply a limited amount of power for a few hours.

So, for the average householder, there's stark choices to make in how electricity is used. Air conditioning takes more energy than there is available, so it's not an option. Ceiling fans can be powered but they mainly waft air around the room without benefitting the occupants.

The brutal truth is that in such high temperatures, sweating, and the evaporation of sweat are the only practical way of staying cool. Unless you have air conditioning - which they can't power. The reason the ceiling fans aren't effective is that the air flow near the people is too low velocity and doesn't facilitate the evaporation of sweat.

How would we do things differently? Well, first of all we'd use spray bottles to mist the skin. Second we'd use one of our low energy coolers to move air directly over the skin surface - evaporating the "sweat". And as a strategy we'd power our coolers from the mains when it was working and also charge up some AA batteries to see us through the power outages.

As our system will use between 3 and 4 watts and a ceiling fan uses about 60 watts then this would free up power for other household appliances. Or looking at the big picture, reducing demand using energy efficient alternatives would actually mean less power outages each day.

Frankly we're seeing this problem in Baghdad now, but with the demand for energy in California so close to the amount available to be supplied, then maybe it's something we'll see a bit more of in the future. But on our doorstep.

We're always pleased to show off the SleepBreeze personal cooler prototype to experts in their own fields.

So, it was a pleasure last night to see an old friend who'd spent a lifetime in the Royal Marines and worked as the military advisor to COBRA - the UK's crisis management nerve centre.

A visit from Ian always feels more like the house has been "stormed" rather than visited. Old habits die hard, I guess. But then again the old softy always spends ages doing jigsaws with our daughter.

I think it's safe to say that Ian was impressed by the cooler's effectiveness and versatility. Never one to resist a pun he rated it as "A product that is genuinely cool.The boys will love this!"

Well, we thought we'd got the design right. But it's nice to hear it from someone with Ian's wealth of practical soldiering experience. "Any chance of some fixing points here, here and here? It could be slung up in a command post if you did that." Every chance, Ian. They're already in the pre-production model."

Two beers and many anecdotes later it was clear he needs to get his memoirs down on paper...

This story will strike a chord with any who were similarly stuck for 2 hours in north London back in May. Rising temperatures and humidity inside the carriages, as ever, were a problem.

Richard Porter, of the London Ambulance Service, said temperatures in the tunnel could have been around 26C (79F) to 31C (88F).

"People were uncomfortable and sweaty", he said. "The rescue operation was very swift."

"We had water and were helping people very quickly."

Swift action by the emergency services and LU staff will, undoubtedly, have played an important part in preventing heat casualties.

The problem goes something like this. First of all the train comes to a halt. Natural ventilation through the train carriage ceases and heat from the passengers and moisture soon starts to make the carriage warmer and more humid. In time passengers struggle to cope with the rise in thermal stress.

Key to managing these situations is the time it takes to decide whether the train can proceed soon, or whether an evacuation is more practical.

It takes time to evacuate a busy underground train. The passengers have to de-train (as it's known) through the driver's compartment. One by one. Able bodied along with the elderly. In a busy train this takes time, sometimes an hour or so. Before they can do this power to the track has to be switched off. During this time the conditions in the train deteriorate. Passengers can start to succumb to heat strain. What is less well known is that the casualty rate rises dramatically once body temperature rises above 39 deg C. So, it takes time for general feelings of discomfort to translate into the small numbers of passengers fainting. BUT it doesn't take much longer for larger numbers of passengers to have serious reactions to the heat, some of which can be near fatal.

An incident back in 2000 illustrates this well, when 2000 commuters were stuck for some 2 hours in sweltering conditions. The numbers of casualties was distinctly higher AND of a more severe nature.

Fortunately, today, the weather was mild.

Speaking personally, I avoid the tube whenever I visit London. Well, its true I could lose a couple of pounds - so the walk does me good. However, if I did have to use it regularly, I'd take a litre bottle of water with me and some kind of portable battery operated fan system.

Quite an emotional moment today to finally see our first batch of PCBs roll off the production line.

The first day of sunshine for some weeks saw me driving down through the New Forest towards Fordingbridge - home to electronics experts CorinTech.

We thought you might like to see inside CorinTech's hi-tech operaton and get a glimpse of the expertise that goes into making our products.

First off the PCB - printed circuit board - is put through a machine that applies a solder paste over specific areas where connections between the components and the PCB's tracks are to be made. Think of screen printing T-shirts and you won't be a million miles off.

Next comes the tricky bit - putting tiny electronic components on to the PCB. For the small test batch that we did today we were delighted to witness Assembly Team Leader, Ian Henderson at work. Ian must have the steadiest hands and keenest eyes for miles to be able to see these components.

Ian was keen to tell me about quality control at CorinTech. He pointed to the bag in which the SleepBreeze components are stored. "The green spot indicates RoHS compliance. A red spot indicates that older, leaded processes, are to be followed.

Keen to learn more I asked about the types of industries that might need to adhere to older practices. Ian explained, "Some of our customers are in safety-critical industries and can't afford to allow any changes to tried and tested product despite RoHS regulations, so require us to continue to keep Non-RoHS processes in place. Running both RoHS and non-RoHS systems in parallel requires very tight stock control." I have to say, that's what we like about CorinTech - they are strictly professional in their approach. We're in safe hands!

Of course the big difference between the samples that we made up today and the production run is quantity. For mass production CorinTech will use an auto-assembly Mirae machine that places up to 20,000 components per hour onto PCBs. The auto-assembly machine, shown below, takes components from the reels shown - or if integrated circuits are needed, from a small chute which vibrates, deliverying one component at a time. Suction cups then pick up each component and position each component with microscopic precision. Well, actually the machine's accuracy is a bit better than microscopic, as components can, if needed, be placed to the nearest micron.

Once the components are in position the solder pasted has to be melted to form the electrical connections. Forget the soldering iron that you might use for this kind of thing at home. The PCB is passed through a large oven with 5 separate temperature zones, allowing precise control of the heating and cooling of the PCB, components and solder over a 5 minute baking period. Now, imagine a PCB with dozens of components and multiple connections on each component, and then think about putting dozens of PCBs through the machine at a time... well, let's just say you'd need to be nifty with a soldering iron to keep up.

Gordon Rice, pictured left (below), has worked with us since we first started working on the electronics sub-assembly for the product.

Gordon explained how the components are stored prior to the final soldering process. "Humidity is a big issue. Imagine if moisture penetrated into the components. When we bake it the resulting steam would cause the components to explode making them useless." Gordon went on to explain that surface tension of the molten solder pulls the component towards the PCB. "That's how we can use this machine to place components on both sides of the PCB - even though one set of components would be upside down they don't fall out."

5 minutes later and our first PCB rolled out of the oven (sorry, couldn't resist the pun). Baked to perfection. Ian explained that each PCB is then examined under a microscope to ensure the quality of the finished product. Good to see that machines haven't taken over completely!

Of course this process isn't suited to all the components that go into our product. I was taken upstairs with my PCB to meet Donna Ashford, one of the team at CorinTech working in their final assembly room. Donna, pictured below, soldered the power socket by hand.

And that, as they say, is that. The first complete batch of PCBs ready for programming and test. More on that later.

The pile of components we now have is quite impressive. The PCB boards I described in the previous post are now with CorinTech's Design Manager Tim Waterman (pictured) and his colleague David Ing - the unsung heros on our project. David has been working for some time translating our schematic for the SleepBreeze fan controller into software that will reside within the PCB's chip. Now that we have the keypad membrane, the PCB, power brick and sample fans David can start testing the product in it's final form.

I won't bore you with all the safety aspects that we've built into the product - but there are layers of electrical and software protection, along with physical barriers to prevent contact with moving parts. David will be testing these out before we send samples away for independent testing.

Meanwhile Tim has been working closely with us ironing out design and sourcing issues. The two issues are closely related. Take for example the selection of the fan we use. We had to establish which fans were actually identical to the nearest fraction of a millimeter to ensure that they would line up with fixing points in the fan housing. Why's that important? Well, imagine if you'd spent thousands on tooling up and suddenly the manufacturer went out of business, changed the spec... you'd be left with an expensive pile of scrap metal.

Early on we found that our first choice of fan was actually quite rare. This meant that the supply might be vulnerable and lead to the exact problem described above. Sadly this meant a lot of redesign work. For starters, Emma Blaken at CorinTech had to do another layout for the PCB, and our fan housing design had to be changed significantly. Well done, Tim for helping us get back on track.

If the previous posts about CorinTech's involvement in developing the SleepBreeze personal cooler has whetted your appetite you may be interested to know that they are holding an open day shortly as part of the Fordingbridge Festival.
CorinTech is both Fordingbridge's largest employer and the Principal Sponsor for the festival. We're happy to advertise their involvement in this event on the BreezeBlog!

Details:

Date: 19th July 10am – 6pm

Venue: Corintech, Ashford Mill, Station Road, Fordingbridge
Event: Corintech is the Festival's Principal Sponsor and Fordingbridge's largest employer. They manufacture micro miniature electronic modules mainly for the Aerospace and Defence industries. The factory tours are followed by a drink and finger buffet in the boardroom.

Cost: Free

We had an email this morning pointing out that we'd proposed to put photos of the product on the site and hadn't yet done so.

There's a practical reason for this. We recently filed patents on the product. Of course, you also have to defend patents - a costly process. We're all aware that some countries are no respecters of Intellectual Property and will produce copycat products within days of seeing a new innovation.

For now we're being cautious in how we handle this as this is our livelihood. Thanks for your patience.

One of the best things about running one's own company is the freedom. I see many friends and neighbours heading off to the station each morning to face the daily grind up to London. About 3 hours per day out of their lives. Week after week. Year after year.

So, it's a real priviledge to have a 10-minute commute from home to the office at Charwell House. Our move to a fully serviced office was prompted by a couple of things. First of all working from the dining room table was less than practical - especially with a toddler on the loose. Our team had got used to holding meetings in the garden, kitchen, garage....

However, there's no getting away from it - even businesses in their infancy need space and so we started to scout around for an office.

We stumbled across the offices at Charwell House in Alton and luckily within a month a vacancy had cropped up. Cathy and her team couldn't do enough to help us settle in.

There's 30 small businesses based here. So, why not ditch the daily grind up to London, start your own company and become number 31!

Oh, and what did we do with all the space freed up at home? Well, it's just been decorated as a nursery for our son who is due to arrive in a few weeks time.

...but a lot of paddling goes on out of sight!

Wednesday next week should see another milestone in the development of the SleepBreeze personal cooler.

The long anticpated "sock" should arrive in the UK. This has caused us endless problems in translating Jill's prototype into a manufacturable item. One company gave up, then a second. We bit the bullet last week and made some design changes, bringing the design much more in line with Jill's version than the manufacturers had attempted. So fingers crossed, as this has been holding up progress for some weeks now.

Last week the finished finger guard arrived - the tool has been cleaned and we now have samples of this component as you'll see it in the finished product.

More exciting news is that a tooling component used to make a keypad recess in the product is nearing completion. A lot of thought has gone into this component. We wanted to have the keypad flush with the rest of the product.

Why? Well, we know that the product will be used in nursing homes and hospitals. With infection control being a big issue in the UK we wanted to design out unncessary nooks and crannies where MRSA bugs could breed. The obvious place to concentrate was the area around the control keypad - where users would touch the product most often. Our design will allow a simple wipe clean surface, leaving little room for grime to build up. A small touch, but we thought it would be a nice touch.

Testing of the firmware within the PCB controller is nearing completion. David Ing has built numerous layers of safety related features into the code. So, it's nearly time for me to start seeing if I can "break" David's control coding in a way that he hasn't forseen. These pieces of code complement the inherent safety features built into the physical electronic components from Emma Blaken's original PCB design.

So, by next Wednesday we should have all the components - albeit some in prototype form. At long last we'll be able to put everything together and see what final changes are needed.

Meanwhile, I'll be working on building and testing our online store. More about that another time.

Andy

The eagle-eyed reader of this blog may have picked up on the fact that Jill and I are expecting our second child. Imminently, it seems. How the weeks have flown by!

A practical advantage of working with local suppliers, and not one I'd thought of when selecting them, is that meetings are never far from home - just in case the "phone goes" and I need to get home quickly!

With night-time feeds and exhaustion on the horizon, we're glad that so much of the background work to launching the SleepBreeze personal cooling product has been done in advance. This week I've been working on the on-line shop, and it will soon be time to look at packaging with our supplier The Packaging Factory.

Of course, as the final details to our mould tools are implemented there's a temptation to try to cram all the decisions about design changes into less and less meetings. Something we're trying to resist as this would inevitably lead to chaos and expensive mistakes that would put the project back weeks. So, although we now have all the components, there are millimetric changes to come for each one of these - which will take a little time.

So, if the BreezeBlog goes quiet for a few days you'll have an idea why. Wish us luck!

Andy & Jill

First the good news. After many months of refining our designs, vetting which components we would use, integrating the PCB with the fan housing we finally have a complete version of the major part of our product. We plugged it into the mains last night, pressed the "ON/OFF" button and it worked. Maybe "breeze" is a little bit of an understatement as Jill could feel its effect from the other side of the room. This was quite an emotional moment for us. Finally something we could use in exactly the same way our customers would experience the product.

Well done to all at CorinTech and BEC Group. You're stars.

Less good news was a component that arrived from the Far East this week. Frankly the quality was not fit for purpose - yes, it worked, but the finish showed poor workmanship, e.g. seams fraying and worse.

One of our military advisors explained the kind of rough handling our product might expect in the field (pretty much what a toddler could achieve in 5 minutes, if you're interested!). So we did exactly that to this component. The component failed in about 1 hour.

So, we could keep investigating sourcing this component from the Far East, but quality control in production batches would always be a concern. Take for example one of our neighbours who sources her products from China. She managed to get her plastics tool made and a first batch made to the standard she needed. After selling these she re-ordered another 5000 items (hey, all they had to do was produce exactly what they'd done originally). Months later the re-ordered items had not appeared but half a dozen samples did - warped and made from a different material. Failure to fullfill orders was the result.

What we want to achieve in our business is timely delivery to customers and consistent high quality of products.

We believe that the key to achieving this is through local supply, where potential problems can be discussed face-to-face. So, this looks like one more component in our product that will be Made in Britain.

This issue will obviously impact on the launch date. August doesn't now look feasible. But the positive thing that has come out of investigating Far Eastern sourcing at the pre-production stage is that we haven't made expensive mistakes which would have affected our customers.

So, sorry for the delay, but quality is what we stand for.

Andy & Jill