Peanut butter challenge, getting ready for assembly, and the sustainability accelerator
Hey funkers and foodies,
Here’s what’s been cooking in the Open Funk world!
First and foremost we would like to warmly welcome and introduce you to our new team member and Funk master Flo aka the cool dude in the picture on the left! He will be supporting our production activities for the next couple of months (and hopefully more) and has already been of great help last month to prepare it and set-up our 3D printing farm!
👊🏽 re:Mix went wild
re:Mix smashed this other blender in the peanut butter challenge, making a better peanut butter, 3 times faster. It also powdered away these cinnamon sticks. We’ve got some amazing product feedback at our self-serve green smoothie session at the Impact HUB, and got to see it in the hands of Katari Farms at Vegan Sundays.
⭐️ We joined the Amazon Sustainability Accelerator, in partnership with Climate KIC
From 1500 applicants, we got selected for a 3-month programme filled with mentoring and networking, focused on growing our startup and evaluating our environmental impact. We’re on this journey together with 15 other sustainable consumer goods and recycling tech startups - read the full press release here.
🪛 re:Mix gets rebuilt by an independent party
Can you make re:Mix in your own community, at your local maker space? To get there, we've partnered with Open Source Ecology Germany to review our open-source documentation and rebuild re:Mix. Independent reviewers will build the device from scratch, using only our documentation, and using locally collected and recycled plastics! Read the full story here.
🤖 We launched our 3D printing farm production
So our 12 Prusa MK3+ printers are finally fully set-up and up-running 24/7 in our little office, printing enough parts for 6 mixers a day! We’ve also connected all of them to the cloud now so we can track and learn from each print to improve printing quality, but also launch new prints and control the quality from home or by the lake ;-) Big thanks to Paul and Marvin from the Motion Lab team and Alexej from the community for their great support and tips along the way!
📦 We’re pretty much ready to start assembly and shipping
Everything’s in place to start assembly as soon as we get the the green light from the certification lab! We’ve been printing enough parts to assemble 30 re:Mix by now, we’ve made special jigs to ease assembly, and we’re moving to a larger space to be able scale the production line soon. As the certification process is not concluded yet (see below), this means we’re taking certain risks (by ordering and making parts), but we want to be in the best position to start shipping immediately.
🐌 Certification is slow … But almost there!
We’ve been doing our best to finalise the certification process, and we’re still waiting for the final test results. More precisely, for chemical testing and food-contact testing, there’s been a back-and-forth of sending additional parts and materials over, which need to be tested and retested. This delay also comes from the fact that we had to change 3D printing materials to comply with certain EU standards. Once we get the green light for these final tests, we’re good to go, and we can start assembling and shipping your re:Mix!
✅ Packaging is done
We’re really excited to see everything come together, from the carton design, to the interior shock-absorbers (made from husk cushions), the user manual and some surprises which we won’t talk about here :) We’ve put a lot of love into crafting these elements, even in making a user manual which you’ll actually enjoy reading.
How do we feel?
We’re definitely reaching a climax with the start of production, after 2 years of ideation and development. That’s pretty exciting!
When do we start shipping?
Hopefully at the end of June or in July (that’s soon!) We’ll send out an update as soon as we know the exact dates.
Address change?
Did your address change since you last placed your order? Send us your new address at hello@openfunk.co
With funk,
Paul & Ken