Gadgetory

the mob bats are here so in this video we're gonna go over two main things one what we've learned from making a real product and two how that impacts our review process because it informs us greatly on what's going on if you're not familiar with the mod mat and this is the first time you've seen it the very basics of it it's that it's a four foot by two foot modding service you put it out to protect the table or the surface underneath it is grounded so we have a common ground point going to a snap on the corner of the mat which terminates in a ring that connects to a ring terminal where you can ground directly to a wall or another ground point like a power supply that you tape on the outside of the power supply something like that and then you connect the wrist strap from the common ground point to your wrist keeps you grounded which if you're doing something like just messing with a motherboard or a video card when they're assembled there's not a huge amount of risk for electrostatic discharge however once you get into taking the things apart like you're gonna liquid cool the video card that was exposed to SMDs are a lot more susceptible to any kind of damage so it's one of those things we're working on like a three thousand dollar Titan V for example it's worth taking the extra precaution because not doing it is a three thousand dollar loss so that's the whole point it's to protect the stuff you're working on when you're modding doing liquid cooling doing shunt resistor mods stuff like that and also look pretty cool so we have like a cheat sheet on here with electrical wiring where you can see the PCIe eight pin power headers so if you're trying to do something like a shunt resistor mod you're shorting the shunts with the liquid metal or something you can take a resistance measurement of one of the pins on here versus the shunt resistor foot and check which chunk goes to which eight pin power header on the card and this would help you figure out which pin is which which ones 12 volt which ones ground and so forth we have a jump start guide so if you're just trying to jump the power supply with a green and a black ground which we point out for you to make it really easy and then we have a thermal paste application guide so again the whole point is to provide a really nice service to work on that will protect the table in the components but also some useful stuff so we've got like the thread Ripper recommendations where we say either just spread it thinly over the entire surface which is the blue or if you don't want to do that because it's kind of a pain with like diamond compound you do an X with some dots and it'll spread on its own we've got rising coffee like sky like X and so forth with all that basic stuff out of the way going through some of the case manufacturing things like that going through our own we have to oh one second guys thanks appreciate it ok sorry I had to deal with some really important business so just to recap here I'm gonna go through some of the supply chain stuff talking about what goes into a product just because this is stuff I've learned in the last few weeks so it might be interesting to you just talk about cost everything in the process obviously has a cost and then you also have to deal with time related to that cost so to get a sample made that could take a couple weeks to get it here look it over if there's anything we want to change we have to communicate with the factory they make a new sample ship it out things like that approve it that takes time there's also shipping time alone so obviously when it comes from the factory and we order a lot of them to sell retail to all of you we deal with do we want to put it on a boat or a plane and here's something interesting for you the boat takes more than 60 days to get it all cleared here at this location shall we so we can ship it out 60 days is too long we didn't want to wait that long and make people who've pre-ordered or backordered wait 60 days just because it's done but we're waiting for it to travel over the ocean a plane is about 10 to 12 it's way more expensive obviously so we eat into some of our own ability to profit but it's worth it because it goes out to the customer faster we really want to just you know we want to get them in we want to get them out to people who bought them and make sure everyone's happy with it so that's something to consider you talk again about computer cases those typically come over on a boat because they can weigh up to 50 pounds way too expensive to put thousands or tens of thousands of them on a plane at that kind of weight and they're typically on a boat and then you deal with things like in the past Coolermaster Corsair and EXT have had stock shortages of some cases because of strikes for example at the docks so and then they just just sit on the water waiting to come into support so that's another small thing another one colors so colors aren't really hard to get right we've worked pretty hard on consistency talking with the factory getting the ink colors accurate and exactly how we want them every time look back at Noctua and they had that fan color difference once which was because run to run you can have some variants so we've worked on that we learned kind of on that front from nock to his fan stuff previously couple other quick and small things contrast and saturation something we have to consider dimensions of when you roll this mat up when it's rolled at the factory into a tube like this we have to make sure it's a limited diameter so that it'll fit in the tubes that we bought locally to ship them out snap quality for the 10 millimeter snap for the ground point distribution has a cost I don't ship them personally we have a distributor for that Freight obviously has cost pallets planes boats all that stuff shipping time of course as noted and then all the other fun things like import duties taxes things like that so yeah learned a lot about how much it cost to make product and what the involvement is to get it done you have to stay on top of the fact that you're working with to make sure the product arrives protected make sure it's all done right and it's it's constant PR and human work just talking to the people making the product to make sure everything comes out how you want that's really difficult so the whole process of this even though we've made a really cool product really happy with it it's been a lot of work even with that stuff aside it's informed our future reviews of products ampuls so when in the past I've said things like I really wish this were 15 dollars cheaper well now I understand just how difficult that can be now there are times when I would still absolutely demand that something is cheaper but other than things like that the deterrent cost down is pretty difficult and so now that we've gone this whole process start to finish making a real product not just merchandise not just a shirt where you you know we make pretty cool shirts too but we give them a design they print it and then we ship it pretty simple to make something like this that's fully Kosta the anti-static mat it's special materials we have to go to a factory that knows what they're doing they make stuff for clean rooms so they really know what they're doing that's a lot of steps it's a lot of research and then for our reviews in the future now we have this extra perspective that's really valuable because I can look at products from the perspective of not a large manufacturer but someone who has gone through the manufacturing process which again highly valuable for reviewing a product so let's go through some of these first of all for this one I've got here this is one of the newest samples that just came in these are going out in the next couple days if you haven't already ordered one you should pick it up stored on Karen's Nexus net because we've got a couple left and they're going out soon so the matte material first of all you can see now that this background color is the same so it's just a straight black it's the raw matte material as opposed previously we had a dark gray background in between all of the detail and that dark gray paint although we liked it we found that improved contrast if we just went with a straight black matte material so we can look at things like for example the pin outs over here really pop now and the blue for the logo pops part of this is because we've changed the backgrounds the contrast is improved we've also talked to the factory to make sure they improve basically the saturation of the paint make sure there's enough paint to really make things bright also the millimeter lines on the ruler so over here millimeter lines now really pop out and they're easier to see as well so lots of small improvements that we've worked on for this run I'll point out this as well the actual ground points to the snap it's called this is a a 10 millimeter snap the ground point is something that the factory punches in and then they cap it on the back so this is smoothed over it's not going to like dig into the surface or anything and it also just kind of looks nice it fits really snugly you pop the ground point on there everything works well and that's all stuff that we've worked on for the first production run and now the follow-up runs and then we go back to the box as I knocked over the beginning of the video even just getting the tubes it's another moving part so as I said earlier learning through the whole process going through manufacturing a product you realize one everything costs money so I have to buy the mat I have to pay for the ink to go on the mat we've got to get the tubes to put them in we have to get the manuals made we have to get the ground points the anti-static wrist straps all of these different things there's distribution there's shipping coming from the factory going out to the customer and obviously that goes through a distributor and I'm just operating here in a garage right now so it's something that we're taking really seriously we're not making a ton of money on it but the whole point is that it's a damn cool product that I'm actually pretty proud of and as a completely side unexpected bonus again learning more about what the manufacturers go through so now when I'm criticizing their products and I'm asking that they drop the price a couple bucks I've got that extra point to consider where well now I know what they go through can they actually do that but we've learned a lot from it very happy with it so as stated pick one up if you want to and otherwise check back soon subscribe for more and go to store dock cameras axis dotnet to find the mod mat where our other shirts and our two-tone hoodies thanks for watching I'll see you all next time