Hardware Podcasts

Ep. 6 - Research and Development

Open Hardware Manufacturing Podcast · 12 Oct 2023 · 57m

What this episode covers

Steven Hawes and Lucian Chapar of Opulo discuss balancing R&D for new products with improvements to their existing Lumen pick-and-place machine. They introduce the 'onion of tolerance' concept, explaining how they prioritize features based on customer pain points, from assembly difficulty to the need for powered feeders. The hosts emphasize using Product Requirements Documents (PRDs) and customer interviews to make pragmatic decisions, such as rejecting a Core XY motion system in favor of their current configuration for better reliability and ease of setup. They also highlight the value of their open-source model, where community mods like linear rails informed official product upgrades.

Most relevant to

companies scaling up

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Opulo, Apple, Formlabs, Bambu Labs, CNC Labs
Products
Lumen, Voron
Tools
FreeCAD

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