Welcome
@Splat and thanks for introducing your new product! I was all over the OG Chewy, but after seeing some reviews decided that it wasn't for me. Just curious what improvements you have made over the OG design? If I remember, there were reports of clogging and too coarse of a grind?
I'm assuming there is only a single grind consistency? My concern is that the grind may not be fine enough.
That's so cool that you brought the Iolite and the Alfa out!
Hi Biohacker. Thanks for the welcome. There are a number of improvments. The construction and quality of materials used in Chewy 2.0 are far superior than Chewy. I was never really happy with the quality of Chewy 1. we had alot of problems with the plastic breaking. So we changed our manufacture and at the same time redeisgned it. So what we have now is machined alminiuim uni body that covers a polycarbon inner skelton. So it looks WAY better and it is very strong. Chewy 1 was plastic clam shell.
Next thing we changed was the power button. On chewy 1 it was a rocker button on the back of the unit. You pushed it forward to turn the blade forward and back to go back. We got alot of feeback saying that it was difficult to us and the switch kept failing. On Chewy 2 we put the button where your thumb lands when you pick it up. So it comforable to us. To turn the blade forward you press button once and hold. To go in the other direction you press the button again. So no rocking any more. It works so well you dont even know its changeing direction.
Next we changed how you cock back the spring loaded push block. This is the part that pushes the weed into the blade. On Chewy 1.0 this was all connected to the door. So when you opened the door the door pulled back the push block and locked it back. There was alot of Problems. first you cant operate the spring and push block when the door is closed. Second bits of weed and flower dust etc got into the spring and strap area gummng and clogging it up. It was an issue we didnt see in the begining. So in Chewy 2 we made the door and cock back mechism seperate. So when loading a bud the spring and strap are covered and prevents weed getting in around the spring and strap. You cna now operate the spring and push block without opeing the door. This means you can flick the spring. If you have a stick icky bud it can get stuck somtimes so you can flick the cock back trigger and it will push it into the blades. Its also handy if ground up weed gets stuck comign out the funnel. Just give the trigger a flick and it will fall out. Third its good for cleaning. When there is no weed inside just give a few flicks to clean the unit out. Very useful. Im sure some more people will come up with more tips for the cock back. Major improvment over Chewy 1.
We used none stick ceramic coating on the sleeve. This is the part/track that the push block slides up and down on. Chewy 1.0 didnt have this. I'm not going to lie, over time it will get gummed up. weed has that effect
. So we made it easy to clean. If you want you can pop all the parts out as they are magnetic. But I find and recommend a Q-tip and a little organic cocnut oil cleans it up in 10-30 secs. Run the Q-tip along the corners of the sleeve and the base of the push block and it will be working as good as new. Actually it will work better because we dont oil it in the factory.
We added a small ring to the top of the blade. This does 3 things. First it prevents you putting your finger in. Yes there are stupid people who will put their finger in a moving blade
. Second it stablises the blade and keeps it straight which makes it grind better. It puts less pressure on the motor and prevents jamming. Chewy 1 didn't have this and the blade would rock. In some cases it rocked so much that it would catch the plastic and literatly pull itself apart. Not good. With chewy 2.0 however you can still grind without the ring as it has an all Alu uni body and the blade can't catch a hold of it.
We changed how you put the battery. Chewy 1 battery door was breaking and people found it difficult to load the batter. Another factroy issue.
Chewy 1.0 was a bit of a nitemare for use. The idea was there but the execution by the manufacture was poor and the design itself had a lot of flaws. That was my fault. Its difficult to get it right the first time.
The grind consistancey is better because of the ring on the blade keeping the blade turning on its axis. I am very interested to hear everyones thoughts on the grind size. We can change the balde size for finer grinds. In fact we will be releasing a spares kit with different size blades and extra rings in the future.
I hope I covered everything there.
All I did on the Iolite (it was call the Inhale back then) was the outer plastic housing engineering. I had just got back from china and was asked to help with it by my now business partner. He actually designed the look of it for a comapny in Ireland. My company was also hired to designed and engineered the Goboof. We learned alot from doing both products and is the reason we got into this market and came up with the Chewy. I'll take you Cool comment though