anyone know if there is a wait on ti cera eo? I read the thread daily and can not recall if that has been covered recently. Thanks thinking about ordering
I just got back from the shop, they have a pile of laser welded assemblies (screw plate, strip and base ring) in Ti, not SS. They expect to be 'current' in the next few days as they finish the bodies (LL and EO cores are ready, EL are till on hold for both types pending the upgraded design. Again, this is for Ti units. I didn't count, but I think they're talking 6 or so units based on the list Travis showed me. They expect to have stock by the weeks end so shipments will me 'same day' after that.
There are a lot (something like 50) of SS orders holding on those welded assemblies, due in later this week hopefully. Those units are also staged awaiting the welded assemblies to finish them, they are probably a week to two weeks out in order they were ordered. They hope to be in 'off the shelf status' there shortly after. Hopefully regular scheduled deliveries will keep it running smoothly.
The welds look very solid to me, but IMO soldering is superior. This is possible with the SS but not Ti, but is very labor intensive. It'll be cheaper in the long run to make them welded so that's what the future will hold it seems. There are like 8 spots they laser weld each end (kind of a complex process of double welds laid down on top of each other, but they in total are only a small fraction of the area that is soldered, the bottleneck created means they will have a higher resistance in practice so there will be higher losses here and less heat in the core. I'll be able to measure the SS units when they come in to see how significant this is (I suspect not very) but I expect the nod to go to soldered connections.
It's also worth noting than none of the field failures have involved the soldered connections. They have been stress failures in the strap itself apparently caused by heat cycling where it turns at the screw plate (which remains unchanged for now). They asked if I wanted to bring my Beta unit back for 'upgrade' when they came in, I declined. IMO this is a 'not broken, don't fix it deal'. I know the one I have is working fine (the 'upgrade' could not be an imporvement there, and nothing about the new version will make them more reliable at the point causing problems. Mine has no issues with the strap it seems, that' can't be said about a replacement.
In another interesting discussion, it seems that the new design of the EO core has been a huge success in terms of reliability. While the tiny coil and very fine wire used in Revolution/DART has lead to a number of failures (the 'end of the leads' situation we've discussed before) the better support and much heavier wire (twice as heavy) have basically eliminated this problem. No Cera cores have failed in this way. Well done TV! A great product line is getting better and better over time IMO.
OF
all over me woooooooooooooooow
