Hi Backers & Friends

A long awaited update is finally here. 

We're sorry for the delay, but there's been a lot going on. Let's start with the bad news (and the reason for the postponed updates)

Mid-March we were hit by multiple personal tragedies

Andreas (our founder & CEO) had a very tragic accident and unfortunately lost his just 2-year-old child. Christ offer, co-founder, have a parent that is terminally ill from cancer. This was discovered late March. These circumstances have taken quite a toll, and being with family and dealing with everything was/is necessary. 

Everything considered, we're ok, and happy to still be doing something that we find so meaningful - bringing our turbines to the world, and working on our technology. 

We're back up to a good speed on pushing the project onwards. 

Thank you for giving us room and time for landing on our feet after all of this <3 

Now for something good: investment round closed

We're very happy to say that we've finally closed our investment round, which has taken longer than anticipated. Also, with everything that has happened, we're happy to have that out of the way. 

We've raised 430k USD and secured another 215k USD in a loan with another 215k coming next year. 

It's good to finally have secured the funding, so we can buy in larger batches of components. 

In the meantime: status 

Turbines: We've shipped 16 turbines to this day. We have a few more in-house. 

Components: We're almost out of components/stock for keeping the production going, so the investment will bring us a much-needed cash injection. We've already begun buying in stock for the next 100 turbines. 

Sales: We'll as we deliver try and sell some turbines. We're expecting it to slowly ramp up. As we ramp production we also try and sell a turbine every 10th or something. 

Deliveries: We'll do everything we can to have your turbines shipped as quickly as possible, however there is some delivery time on some components, we don't expect to have delivered the last turbine until fall. We're already past mid.-May and if we're lucky we'll have everything in house in late June. Then we need to produce and ship the remaining 55 turbines. 

Other things done and ongoing

Clicker tool

We've made a tool that can indicate the holding strength of the anchors. This is meant to help guide you when installing the anchoring, and can give a check of the soil is strong enough. 

Shipping troubles: better shipping packaging 

We've had some issues with broken parts during shipment. We've made a new and stronger custom cardboard box and we might need to source some custom foam inserts for shipments. 

Furthermore, we've done some drop-testing, here's a screenshot from a video showing a drop. 

Transport bag set

New design that's slimmer, neater and packs better. It should be a little sturdier and balance better. 

Here's a few pics from the documentation. 

Production optimizations: iteration 3

We're continuing to improve the production effort, improve design based on the feedback we're getting from the people that has received their turbines. Thank you to those people! 

Here are a few changes: The gear wheel is a little bigger to increase robustness as we've seen a few shipping failures. Also shipping failures on the end of the boom. It's a TPU handle, that's much sturdier. 

Aerodynamically calibration of blade sets improved infrastructure 

We've improved our infrastructure and tools when we're doing the aerodynamically balancing of the rotor disc. This saves a ton of time, and headaches, as the process is much easier now. 

Quality Control: Print farm climate chamber, test coupons etc. 

We've made a climate chamber were we can store our filament in. It's an enclosed space for the filament, so we can keep it nice and dry. We've also done a lot of investigation into our parts manufacturing quality assurance. We still have work to do. 

Some of what we've done is made test samples for breakage in a jig. This tells us the strength of the parts. 

We've also made jigs for testing our belts and making sure we have the correct settings when printing pulleys and gears. 

Firmware, how to update firmware: ready with new firmware on website 

The latest firmware update guide is available on the website

CE markings, improving safety , hit with rotor blades 

We've begun the "last stretch" on Wind Catcher. We're still missing the CE markings for Wind Catcher. This is a lot of unexciting bureaucratic work that requires manuals and a ton of documentation. We've already put in a good amount of progress on it, but are still missing a few things. 

We'll keep you updated on this. 

In the meantime you can watch this clip, DON*T TRY IT YOURSELF. We really don't recommend doing it. It gives a good whack, but if you're unlucky it could break a finger. 

VIDEO on LinkedIn 

That's it for now. Thank you for giving us time to deal with this rollercoaster that's been the last 2.5 months. 

All the best to you

The KiteX Team