December/New Year TNT
over 2 years ago – Sun, Jan 02, 2022 at 07:46:56 PM

 Terragons News Time

Welcome everyone to a very exciting TNT! We hope everyone had an amazing holiday season! 

As always the first question that we want to cover is Fulfillment! As you will see from the photos below the mold is DONE and ready for final calibration and testing! This means that as long as all things go well with the initial testing we should hit our target to begin fulfillment this month! 

We will be in close contact with our molder as we move forward and will keep you updated on any changes!

The Mold!

So the pictures below show off our completed caddilac of a mold! Its really hard to believe how much time went into this thing but beneath the relatively simple looking facade this mold is extremely complicated with many moving parts.

Our molder and mold maker were shut down for the holidays, so they should be spinning up and getting testing going very soon!

We cant wait for this to get up and running working on full production!

New Location

Babble Tree has been moving over the holiday to our brand new location! This new space is vastly larger than the old one. This will provide more space and increase productivity! 

Everything has been boxed and most of our equipment is installed! We ran all new electrical, painted, and put in some work to get the space ready so we have not been idle! We are excited to have the space we really need to scale up for fulfillment.

Scatter Update

Currently all of the scatter is boxed up and in transit. We know many of you are excited to see the brand new tree trunk and BF Tree trunk designs so we will be sure to share photos of those with you soon! The biggest hint I can give you is MORE DETAIL. With our new and improved sculpting to 3d printing process we are able to greatly improve the resolution of these pieces and can't wait to share them with you!

Thanks again and we will talk again soon!

November TNT
over 2 years ago – Wed, Dec 01, 2021 at 09:52:24 AM

Terragons News Time

Firstly the folks here at Terragon Gaming hope everyone has had a great start to their Holiday season! This is a crazy season for all of us, and we hope that you are all safe and healthy!

Updates to Fulfillment Timeline

The first question on everyones minds is Fulfillment. We spoke with our mold maker and injection molder and we are still on track to begin Fulfillment by the end of January! We continue to do everything possible to ensure that this happens. We are eager to get these tiles into your hands!

Mold Progress

The mold itself is in the process of being finalized. We covered the mold making process a bit more in a previous TNT, but we can now share pictures of OUR mold going through some of the stages you saw in that update!

Assembly

We are excited as the new year approaches. We are incredibly happy with the sample tiles that we have recieved, and are working on creating Assembly fixtures to decrease assembly time. Every efficiency step we take means more orders going out faster! We have purchased the parts to make a pneumatic assembler and will share sneak peaks of the process when we get that up and running!

Speaking of assembly, we have been putting together some of the final samples and its about time we shared what they look like!

Fulfillment Order

We still intend to fulfill based on backer number. We are going to send frequent work orders to our manufacturer on what we need based on numbers from backerkit. So instead of ordering all 150,000+ tiles at once and run all of each color, we will be doing smaller runs of each color based on order demand. We will do our best to ensure we go in order and plan accordingly.

Terragons and other products

We want to thank everyone who placed orders for our new Terragon Coasters and Terragon Hollow products! Your support has meant the world to us and the feedback has been tremendously positive! Thanks to everyone who stops by our website! We want to reiterate that OTHER PRODUCTS DO NOT IMPACT KICKSTARTER FULFILLMENT! 

We have hired and trained people to create these new products completely autonomously. These people will also assist in Kickstarter fulfillment! Kickstarter fulfillment comes first NO MATTER WHAT! Quality and transparency have been our defining principles since launching this Kickstarter and they are the foundation of our company. 

Thank you to everyone for your continued support, and we wish you all a happy holiday season!

October TNT
over 2 years ago – Thu, Nov 04, 2021 at 04:41:44 PM

Terragons News Time

Hello everyone, we hope you had a great month of October! We have been hard at work here at BabbleTree, and we want to give you an update of where we stand at the end of October.

What about the Tiles?

This is obviously the most important question we can answer. So lets get in to exactly where they are at. The full mold itself is in production at our mold maker's facility, which makes us hopeful that we will see it arrive to our injection molder on schedule. If the mold is on schedule we will be able to begin fulfillment in January.

We have set a plan in place with our injection molder where we intend to run small batches of each color instead of running the entirety of each color at once. While this is more expensive due to color changes it will mean we can begin fulfillment much SOONER. 

We will be recieving complete sample runs for photography and other assets this week. Which will be the first time we will have a full collection of each color tile in its final injected molded form from our sample mold. We can't wait to share what they look like in all their glory!

As with most first time production runs, there is the possibility of a delay. The biggest worry currently fine tuning the tool itself. Our mission as a company is to provide the best quality possible. So the tool may arrive and work perfectly, or adjustments may need to be made. This can take hours, or days. Fingers crossed that it is perfect upon arrival, but know that we will keep everyone updated regardless.

We will update you as soon as we know more!

The Kickstarter Dice Stretch Goal

One of our stretch goals with this Kickstarter was a custom resin hand made D20! We initially intended to make these ourselves, but quickly realized we did not have the time to not only make them, but to make them as good as we wanted them.

So we reached out to our friend Rybonator and worked with him to get them made! You can see the video of how he made them below and on his youtube channel!

A new product, Terragon Hollows!

We have also released a new product on our website! This is our take on a classic dice tray, and it can hold 4 of our coasters in it as well!

We want to assure everyone that the production of Hollow's, just like our Coasters, will not impact the lead time of the Kickstarter fulfillment IN ANY WAY. We have hired and trained someone who is able to operate independently and craft these products. If for any reason it these products began to interfere with the Kickstarter we would cease selling the product.

Our Kickstarter is our #1 priority! We are in this to build a brand and business. One of transparency and quality. This Kickstarter is just the beginning.

Thank you all for your continued support and encouragement. We will see you in the November TNT!

*BONUS TNT* - A trip to the Mold Maker!
over 2 years ago – Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 12:57:08 AM

Terragons News Time, BONUS EDITION

Hello everyone, I have collected some photos from our trip to the mold maker and would like to share some of what we learned! It's an exciting and crazy process, and we hope that you will find it just as amazing as we do!

How is a mold made?

A mold is quite a complicated mechanism with many moving parts. Injectors that push plastic into the mold along with and tubing. Pins to push the piece out after its been molded. Some molds are so complicated that they close in stages! Each of these parts must be custom machined. And theres a variety of ways to make these numerous parts that make a mold.

Wire Cutting

Yes you read that right. Charged brass wire can actually be used to CUT through steel. Its a pretty crazy machine. And since the wire is so thin in diameter it can cut nearly perfect square edges! 

CNC's

A CNC with a variety of cutting heads can machine steel down into the required part shapes. The cooling fluid you see everywhere helps to prevent tools and the piece from getting too hot. 

Graphite?!?

Yes, graphite just like the material in pencil leads is used to help create our mold. But how you might ask? Well its actually pretty amazing. Graphite, when electrically charged in a process called EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining) can actually burn away steel! STEEL! Can you believe it? The graphite burn allows for a cleaner and more precise shape within the mold that is not possible with other cutting techniques.

Squaring a Piece

This machine has a bed that is perfectly flat, with a rotary wheel above. It travels across the piece parrallel to the bed. This makes a parallel set of sides which is crucial to making a mold that will work perfectly as all the parts move!

EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining)

The graphite burns into the piece, turning the steel into particles or carbon that are caught in the liquid it floats in. Its pretty crazy to think that the material that makes a pencil lead can cut steel!

Mold Making is no easy thing!

These are just some of the tools that are used to make all of the individual parts for a plastic injection mold. Each of these pieces come together to create a final mold. It is the job of the mold engineer to ensure the mold will not only operate, but fit within our manufacturers machines. There is so much to these molds that we have only scratched the surface! From plastic flows and choke points to heat dissipation it seems to never end. 

We hope you are excited to see some in process photos of molds being made and to maybe have learned a bit about the process. 

We will be back with an update at the end of this month and will of course keep you informed if anything big comes up. Stay safe and see you in the next TNT!

TNT #26 - The Mold
over 2 years ago – Wed, Sep 01, 2021 at 03:28:59 PM

Terragons News 

Hello everyone this is the first TNT on the new monthly release schedule. We have a few exciting things to share with you, but overall we are waiting for delivery of the final production mold.

Colors

All of the tile colors are approved and now with our supplier. They will be running samples with our prototype mold as soon as possible so we can do final review and get final tiles in every color in our hands!

Visiting the Mold Tool Maker

We will be taking a trip to visit our mold tool maker very soon. Not only will it be awesome to see the facility it is important for us to form a good working relationship with our suppliers. This helps to ensure the best quality product. Hopefully we will be able to take some photos and videos to share with everyone!

Thats the concludes our August TNT. Rest assured if any big news comes up we will not wait until the end of the month to share it. Thanks for your continued support and see you for next months TNT!