First: Big thanks to Sam, Tieg, Buenas, Amanda, Jenny, Daniel, Lisa, Jordan and Sasha for helping Zach and I assemble the first 65 Public Radios. The day went really well, and we really appreciate everyone who helped out.
A few things we learned:
- Antenna screw installation can probably be staged separately from the rest of the operation. It's a fairly rote task, and can be done with little concentration. In the future, we'll probably do the antenna screws at its own station, possibly on a totally different day than the rest of the assembly process.
- We need *way* more speaker alignment & assembly fixtures. We had 7; I think I want to have 25 next time.
- We need a foolproof, mechanical method of making sure the speaker screws are all equally (and appropriately) tight.
- Scanning the barcodes (which are on the underside of the lids) is kind of a pain in the ass, but could be worse.
In total, the mechanical assembly process takes about 6 minutes per radio. I'd like to cut that in half; I really want the full box build (taking raw components in and ending up with a tuned, packaged radio at the end) to take about 4 minutes. I think the stuff above will help, and I'm hoping to make more progress towards this goal over the next week.