BIG UPDATE
Despite the radio silence work on the Bud Bee has been happening and will continue to happen. Please feel free to read the wall of text below and post any questions you have.
Design Changes
A new adhesive has been chosen, tested, and implemented. Test Bud Bees with the new adhesive were boiled in water and frozen for extended periods with no adhesive failures observed. The new adhesive meets FDA 175.105 and 175.300, which means it is safe for food contact, whether direct or indirect. Most importantly, this new adhesive has no odor and is fully cured at an elevated temperature instead of using an activator which means there is no chance of the adhesive being partially cured. The adhesive has a shorter pot life and working time than the old adhesive, but the dispensing equipment used during assembly can accommodate this no problem.
New anodizing vendors that provide more consistent anodizing have been found. The anodizing on units that have been sold previously were acceptable, but the consistency of anodizing being sent back to me has been far from acceptable. This lack of consistency from the previous anodizing vendor has been the single biggest problem for me to keep inventory in stock. The amount of times I sent out batches of perfect parts just to have them ruined by the anodizer was extremely disheartening. I searched high and low for anodizing vendors and sent out many samples the past few months to over ten different anodizing shops around Canada and the US. I went down this rabbit hole so far that I was even having phone calls with chemical engineering PhDs that I found through papers published in scientific journals trying to troubleshoot these consistency issues. With the new anodizing vendors I have a weight lifted off my shoulders knowing the parts I send out will all come back looking great.
The stingers for the Bud Bee Grinders have had changes to how they are made. Smoothness and hardness of the stinger surfaces that slide against the inner bearing race are key. The stingers are first turned on a CNC lathe with a new program to minimize surface roughness, then they are placed in a CNC mill to cut the remaining features, and finally the stingers are tumbled and polished in a ceramic media. I have ordered a specialized tool that should arrive soon that will add an extra step to the CNC mill program which should smooth the sliding faces even more and slightly harden them.
A small geometry tweak on the top centering teeth has been made to allow for a smoother closing action, everything is backwards compatible.
New Developments
I have found two different stainless steel mesh stamping vendors, one in Canada and the other in the US, that I will work with to get meshes for 4 piece Bud Bee prototypes. The magnet arrangement on the current 3 piece Bud Bee is designed so that when the 4 piece Bud Bee becomes available you will be able to attach the mesh filter and kief bowl parts to original 3 piece Bud Bees. I’ll be making the mesh filter and kief bowl available as a separate add on in addition to fully assembled 4 piece Bud Bees.
I sent out some stainless steel stingers to a very specialized and proprietary polishing process and they came back with mirror-like surfaces. This process looks very promising and it may become standard for all stainless parts including the stinger and stainless versions of the Bud Bee.
Stainless steel blanks have arrived for prototyping stainless versions of the Bud Bee.
