AGD
01-20-2003, 09:31 PM
AO,
It's been a while since I updated you so I thought this would be a good time. SO what the heck have we been doing? Here is a recap but before we go on I wanted to explain some of the terminology and how we (and you) should think about things.
First of all we have two categories for research projects, 1: long term and 2: short term. If it's a long term project that means its on a mental list but we are not working on it weekly. Short term of course means we are spending time on it regularly in hopes that it will happen in the foreseeable future. Some things never come off long term, others come to short until we get road blocked and they move back to long.
I am pleased to report that we are finally getting to the end of the Xmag project and the last major snafu was the ACE boards that all had to be sent back and rewired. At this point we are trying to look over every one that goes out extra carefully so we don't screw up. Nothing on the long or short term list for right now we just want to make the darn things.
LvL10 Efficiency:
Definitely on the short term list and we have spent a significant amount of time on the gun dyno looking at stuff. The problem is we can not find any more than a 5-10% drop in efficiency from L7 to L10. This is looking over several guns and comparing them back to back with the same paint etc. We are beginning to think that maybe its not the big issue we thought it was. If someone has a gun that is drastically worse L7 to L10 please call us. For right now this one is moving to long term until we get better info.
Slug Bodies:
It has gone from short to long term while we are waiting for someone to mill one of these things. After the initial excitement it seems that its way harder for people to get these milled than we originally thought. This is making us think that maybe it was an idea ahead of its time and we need to move in another direction. We remain hopefull that a bunch will show up soon and get the ball rolling again. We are making another small batch with the backs extended in hopes it takes off. We have had interest from a few dealers but we don't have the price locked yet so its slowing things down. Definitely not dead but holding.
ULE Bodies:
The ULE concept was a quickie thing from a year or two ago that stuck in everyone's minds so we are going with it. Plan B on the slug bodies is to just get on with it and make our traditional tube out of aluminum in lots of pretty colors. You have just voted on the teardrop design for this body and it is now going into production along with a screw in feed tube (angel). There will be two cosmetic styles of short feed tube which you have already seen. These should be out in weeks if things go right
ULE Warp Bodies:
Lots of people are asking about these but there is a problem. To make it come out the side it has to go THROUGH the rail. This requires machining and from the Slug experience this seems difficult for people to get done. We are still thinking about it so it stays short term.
Detents:
Well I have complained about them long enough so now we had to step up and make them ourselves. We (hopefully) fixed all the stupid stuff and have a robust design. They are one piece and fit angel threads. Staying with our attempt to look cool we are making them with the little grab slots on the outer edge that you like so much. They have nylon balls and are at the machine shop now. Look for them in a few weeks. Sorry to the people that didn't get detents with their Xmags everyone was out of stock hence we have to make them.
Roller Trigger:
My super hype job got these guys rolling so we spent an afternoon on it two days ago and came up with a simple, elegant design that can bolt to your existing trigger. You have to drill and tap holes but we think that may be doable at your local store. We blasted prints to our suppliers and we are expecting a batch of protos back this week (cool huh?!). We will be selling these protos in the store asap with the idea that YOUR TESTING THESE OUT. Just like the first Superbolt, don't buy them unless your willing to deal with it. The design is slick and removable if you don't like it. They will be cheap too!
Elec. / Mech Trigger:
Simon is currently working on his own version of this. It's version of our switch that once you flip to mechanical mode blocks out E mode. It has been on our long term list but might move off if the tourny's get worse about it. I am waiting to see what Simon came up with.
Trap Door Feed:
Remember this one? No its not dead just on the long term list. With the ULE body not working with warps and the Xmag needing a good warp module this could be slated to get worked on soon.
Grips for Xmag:
We know you want them but the smartest thing for us to do is make our frame fit existing grips. To do that requires remachining the frame and a new pc board design. That is a lot to bite off right now and we have a lot of grip frames in stock. This one is staying on the long term list for a while more, sorry.
Y Grip:
Well the good news is that this one is right on the edge of getting on the short list! When we have a chance we are going to rework the print and see if it works out the way we want. If it does we will come to the forum and survey for preorders. If the demand is there we will pre-sell 100 of them and tell our machine shop to start cutting. If we don't pre-sell 100 it dies forever! They will be somewhere between 100-125 dollars so start saving.
Emag Battery:
We are spending a significant amount of time looking at the whole power system on our e-guns. As you can imagine the battery/recharger system is quite expensive and we would like to reduce that cost for all of us. The problem is that the Plutonium power source we are interested in is really hard to find :). No news here but we are noodeling it daily.
Apparel, Promo:
Yes we do this too! We have arranged to have CSG the people that made your AO jerseys do all our jerseys. We now have them in the store and you can order them custom online! We also have hats with the AO logo on order along with headbands, and a bunch of other stuff I cant remember. We have also just upgraded our plotter to a 42¨ 1200 dpi HP system that we can print glorious full color posters on. We are waiting for delivery of a laminator so you can order wall candy of your favorite AGD products / people and they will be water proof no less! For those of you running small tourneys, we have developed a generic 2' x3' full color scoreboard that we can print out with the name of your tourney right on it! If you're an AGD dealer you can order one for free!
So THAT¡¨S what we are doing here in R&D!!! (See, it's all just for you)
AGD
It's been a while since I updated you so I thought this would be a good time. SO what the heck have we been doing? Here is a recap but before we go on I wanted to explain some of the terminology and how we (and you) should think about things.
First of all we have two categories for research projects, 1: long term and 2: short term. If it's a long term project that means its on a mental list but we are not working on it weekly. Short term of course means we are spending time on it regularly in hopes that it will happen in the foreseeable future. Some things never come off long term, others come to short until we get road blocked and they move back to long.
I am pleased to report that we are finally getting to the end of the Xmag project and the last major snafu was the ACE boards that all had to be sent back and rewired. At this point we are trying to look over every one that goes out extra carefully so we don't screw up. Nothing on the long or short term list for right now we just want to make the darn things.
LvL10 Efficiency:
Definitely on the short term list and we have spent a significant amount of time on the gun dyno looking at stuff. The problem is we can not find any more than a 5-10% drop in efficiency from L7 to L10. This is looking over several guns and comparing them back to back with the same paint etc. We are beginning to think that maybe its not the big issue we thought it was. If someone has a gun that is drastically worse L7 to L10 please call us. For right now this one is moving to long term until we get better info.
Slug Bodies:
It has gone from short to long term while we are waiting for someone to mill one of these things. After the initial excitement it seems that its way harder for people to get these milled than we originally thought. This is making us think that maybe it was an idea ahead of its time and we need to move in another direction. We remain hopefull that a bunch will show up soon and get the ball rolling again. We are making another small batch with the backs extended in hopes it takes off. We have had interest from a few dealers but we don't have the price locked yet so its slowing things down. Definitely not dead but holding.
ULE Bodies:
The ULE concept was a quickie thing from a year or two ago that stuck in everyone's minds so we are going with it. Plan B on the slug bodies is to just get on with it and make our traditional tube out of aluminum in lots of pretty colors. You have just voted on the teardrop design for this body and it is now going into production along with a screw in feed tube (angel). There will be two cosmetic styles of short feed tube which you have already seen. These should be out in weeks if things go right
ULE Warp Bodies:
Lots of people are asking about these but there is a problem. To make it come out the side it has to go THROUGH the rail. This requires machining and from the Slug experience this seems difficult for people to get done. We are still thinking about it so it stays short term.
Detents:
Well I have complained about them long enough so now we had to step up and make them ourselves. We (hopefully) fixed all the stupid stuff and have a robust design. They are one piece and fit angel threads. Staying with our attempt to look cool we are making them with the little grab slots on the outer edge that you like so much. They have nylon balls and are at the machine shop now. Look for them in a few weeks. Sorry to the people that didn't get detents with their Xmags everyone was out of stock hence we have to make them.
Roller Trigger:
My super hype job got these guys rolling so we spent an afternoon on it two days ago and came up with a simple, elegant design that can bolt to your existing trigger. You have to drill and tap holes but we think that may be doable at your local store. We blasted prints to our suppliers and we are expecting a batch of protos back this week (cool huh?!). We will be selling these protos in the store asap with the idea that YOUR TESTING THESE OUT. Just like the first Superbolt, don't buy them unless your willing to deal with it. The design is slick and removable if you don't like it. They will be cheap too!
Elec. / Mech Trigger:
Simon is currently working on his own version of this. It's version of our switch that once you flip to mechanical mode blocks out E mode. It has been on our long term list but might move off if the tourny's get worse about it. I am waiting to see what Simon came up with.
Trap Door Feed:
Remember this one? No its not dead just on the long term list. With the ULE body not working with warps and the Xmag needing a good warp module this could be slated to get worked on soon.
Grips for Xmag:
We know you want them but the smartest thing for us to do is make our frame fit existing grips. To do that requires remachining the frame and a new pc board design. That is a lot to bite off right now and we have a lot of grip frames in stock. This one is staying on the long term list for a while more, sorry.
Y Grip:
Well the good news is that this one is right on the edge of getting on the short list! When we have a chance we are going to rework the print and see if it works out the way we want. If it does we will come to the forum and survey for preorders. If the demand is there we will pre-sell 100 of them and tell our machine shop to start cutting. If we don't pre-sell 100 it dies forever! They will be somewhere between 100-125 dollars so start saving.
Emag Battery:
We are spending a significant amount of time looking at the whole power system on our e-guns. As you can imagine the battery/recharger system is quite expensive and we would like to reduce that cost for all of us. The problem is that the Plutonium power source we are interested in is really hard to find :). No news here but we are noodeling it daily.
Apparel, Promo:
Yes we do this too! We have arranged to have CSG the people that made your AO jerseys do all our jerseys. We now have them in the store and you can order them custom online! We also have hats with the AO logo on order along with headbands, and a bunch of other stuff I cant remember. We have also just upgraded our plotter to a 42¨ 1200 dpi HP system that we can print glorious full color posters on. We are waiting for delivery of a laminator so you can order wall candy of your favorite AGD products / people and they will be water proof no less! For those of you running small tourneys, we have developed a generic 2' x3' full color scoreboard that we can print out with the name of your tourney right on it! If you're an AGD dealer you can order one for free!
So THAT¡¨S what we are doing here in R&D!!! (See, it's all just for you)
AGD