December 2025 Opulo Update

Hey folks, happy December! Check out what we've been working on the past month:

Lead Times

We're still actively looking for more assembly techs to join the team! If you're in the Pittsburgh area and interested, please don't hesitate to apply!

As always, the official lead time on each product's product page is the most accurate metric for when you'll see your hardware ship! There's a good chance we ship early, internally it's about a 2-3 week lead time, but we keep it where it is to ensure we're able to stick to our estimate. A bit more on this later in the update!

Feeder Loading Station

We've received a number of requests for a dedicated station to load a feeder that isn't on the Lumen itself, so I built a prototype of the Feeder Loading Station.

This is pretty simple: a power conditioning board, cable harness up to a single slot, and a rail to mount it. So far, it's been pretty nice to have around for loading up a spool, especially while the machine is in operation.

If this is something you'd be interested in, please let us know!

Wide Feeders

Beta units for the new 16mm and 24mm feeders have been shipped out, and feedback is coming in! So far, it's good news, but there's a few improvements we want to make before shipping:

PCB tweaks - Last week we asked the @review-squad in the Discord server for feedback on the PCB design, and we have lots of great feedback to incorporate.
Proper spool holding - These new feeders have an updated tape path that expects the spool to come from beneath the machine. There isn't currently a good solution for holding spools like this, especially considering much larger 13" spools that wider tape typically comes on. We're working on a proper solution for this to land alongside wide feeders. A bit more about this...

Reel Cassettes

8mm feeders come with an integrated spool holder for standard 7" reels, but for wider tapes there isn't currently a great solution for what happens to the reel. Especially for the upcoming wider feeders, we need to have a solution.

We've been spending a lot of time thinking about the feeder loading / storage / movement workflow. Lots of interviews with customers, usability testing, quick CAD models as an experiment. This is what we've learned:

Mechanically coupling the feeder and reel is handy for keeping things organized.
Often, people will stack feeders on their side for storage, making it hard to find and retrieve them.
The lack of a floor-mounted reel holder that supports up to at least 13" reels of components, especially for 16mm and 24mm feeders, is frustrating.

We've thrown around a number of ideas, but we're currently exploring the idea of a "Reel Cassette" that mounts both the reel and the feeder onto one plate for easy storage and movement.

Please forgive the rough CAD; just a quick mockup!

The reel mounts in the center, providing the least possible resistance to rotation as the feeder unwinds the tape. At the top, there's a small print that allows the feeder to "dock" and stay coupled to the reel.

These cassettes can then be quickly mounted onto a rolling base that sits under the LumenPnP. Feeders can easily be undocked from the cassette and loaded into a slot on the machine directly above.

This approach seems to solve all of the issues. Feeders and the reels they have loaded are mechanically coupled and easy to keep together. Feeders and their loaded reels now have an easy method of being stored (and with a tab for a label, very easy to see which parts you have loaded at a glance). And large reels now have a proper place to be mounted while in operation.

These are early thoughts in trying to solve this problem, so we'd like feedback! What do you think of this format? Is this more complicated than what you need? We want to make sure we're providing a good solution for folks that have 5 feeders, or 500. Please let us know in the YouTube comments, or shoot us a message at support.opulo.io with your thoughts!

The Office

There is only one word to describe our office: full. We have completely maxed out our square footage, and it's currently our largest bottleneck as an organization, especially in regards to growth (and bringing the lead time down!). Keeping more inventory in house to keep up with demand, and hiring more folks to join the team requires much more space than we currently have.

We had to get rid of a couch to make space for this inventory

These new storage spots are necessary, as our dedicated stock room is completely full

I am aggressively working on finding a solution to this. Signing on additional or new space (especially for a hardware company) takes an extraordinary amount of time and effort. Hopefully I'll have some news for y'all soon.