June 2025 Opulo Update
Hey everybody, happy June! Here's what's been going on at Opulo this month:
Lead Times
Our lead times are still unchanged from last month, but quite a bit has happened just to keep them from getting longer! We've hit quite a growth spurt this spring, and we've been reorganizing how our manufacturing line operates to be more efficient, and hiring more help over the past couple months to accommodate the increased demand. As we train our new team members and scale up production, we're hoping we'll see the lead time drop.
We're still operating with at a slightly shorter lead time internally so there's a good chance we're shipping ahead of the listed date, but we keep it where it is to ensure everyone gets their hardware on time.
Wide Feeders
We've been making good progress on the wider feeders! The new geometry requires a different controller PCB, so I'm taking the opportunity to make some updates to the design. It will work functionally the same as the current feeder PCB, but we're making some part substitutions to make it easier for builders to source and have better power efficiency. The original board was designed in the midst of the Chip Shortage, and its Bill of Materials reflects that.
I've also been working on improving the peel gear mechanism, making it dovetail into the frame for a good structural mount, but also only requiring two screws to secure.
The last big unknown about the design is the pick window. Adding light downwards pressure to the tape will help with teeth engagement as I showed in the latest video, so I've been experimenting with a number of different ways to provide that force. Printed flextures and spring steel inserts are the two contenders thus far.
We also finally received some samples for bigger drive motors that will help move the heavier tape and components, so I'll be testing them out on the next prototype build.
As always, development is happening live in our Github! Right now we're doing some review on the schematic, so if you have thoughts on the design (view in-browser)(Github), please don't hesitate to chime in on an existing Github Issue or make a new one if it's not there already.
OHM Podcast
We are finally back into our normal cadence of making OHM episodes! Thea has stepped in as an interim host while Lucian has been out, and we'll also be recording with Lucian again as well!
We've posted two new episodes; one that Lucian and I recorded a few months ago about deciding to start a company, and one with me and Thea about influential media. You can listen to them here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Paste Utility
As a way of helping folks use their Paste Extruder a bit easier, I published a Paste Utility web tool a while back that lets you run pasting jobs from either a PCB Gerber file or manually captured positions.
We've had many customers using this tool for a variety of different applications over the past few months. However, this tool is very much at "beta" stage right now, and lacks a number of quality of life features. I've been working on improving the tool in a number of ways over the past few weeks.
The main issue with the current method of running a pasting job is aligning your board so the tool knows where it is in the work area. Right now, you just manually capture the position of a single pad to tell the tool where the board is in space. But it does not account for rotation and it's fully manual.
I've now added the top camera feed into the tool, bundled with a web assembly build of OpenCV. This allows the tool to automatically find fiducials, and even click-to-jog on the camera feed!
All happening in a web browser, no install needed
I've also greatly improved the way points are managed, and jobs will now also save settings along with stored positions.
There's still quite a bit left to do, but I'm hoping to have a new version available for folks soon. This will also come with good default settings and recommended techniques for actually using the tool to paste boards automatically.
Reach Out
If you have any feedback, questions, or comments about this update, please don't hesitate to reach out to us here.
Thanks, and we'll see you next month!
-Stephen