Quote Originally Posted by gabe View Post
I do appreciate the criticism, it helps us do better, but I'd also like to get some operational feed-back. Have you tested the board yet? Let's see some temps and overclocks!

Base finish: I've asked our CNC guy to modify the tool path on the surface finish operation over the GPU to a circular pattern. Hopefully we can start implementing this in the next production batches.

Thread burs: totally concur. Been asking my ppl to be careful with this, and it looks like I'm going have to yell louder this time.

Allen wrench: OK

Cost cutting measures: these days, most if not all of the components in our PC's are made somewhere in Asia. If we want to stay in business, we have no choice but to make things over there. The toughest part for small American businesses when shifting production to Asia is to create a quality culture within the organization. As usual, it boils down to picking the right individuals to do the job, train them right, and keep pushing for perfection.
gabe,

I love what your company does. Y'all innovate like mad, listen to your customers and adjust according to end-user feedback in a way few others do. I also appreciate the realities of the modern design and manufacturing business.

Here's the way I see the perceived quality issue: you operate in a unique, high-expectation marketplace where perception is reality. to compound the problem, most water-coolers do it as a hobby or view it as a luxury. The problem is, even if your micropin bases perform like crazy (and all testing I've seen confirms this), the visual flaws bring up quality concerns that may or may not be warranted from a performance standpoint.

Where far-East manufacturing is concerned, I've seen some AMAZING machining done, so the country of origin is absolutely a non-issue. I've seen about a dozen companies move to Korean or Chinese manufacturing, and they all start the same way- substandard visual defects. Where they go from there, and the level of success ultimately attained is generally directly related to the amount of defects the design firm is willing to accept. The successful ones I've seen solve the visual issue within one or two product shipments.

Best wishes to you and Swiftech on your transition. I hope to see the rapid improvement I'm sure you expect, and look forward to purchasing more product from you within the next generation.