MetMo CubeClub Forum

We had a late night last night going through the final QC and finishing process for the December batch (and we may have watched Batman Begins while we did it....) This was a super nice batch with a 97% pass rate. Now they just need to be cleaned up and packed and we'll be shipping them off to you next week! Based on the advice from our couriers this should mean your Cubes arrive by Christmas, but we can't make any guarantees I'm afraid. Keep an eye out in your inbox for the Cube Care email and your tracking info, and if you have any questions in the meantime drop them below or send us an email on hello@metmocube.com 

The first MetMo Driver that everyone fell in love with was a mild steel prototype that was machined in Geoff's workshop. He's built his workshop up over 40 years, and he'd be proud to tell you that he has more equipment than some manufacturers! With this equipment and expertise we were able to produce the MetMo Driver. Geoff used a Myford lathe and a milling machine to do pretty much all the machining on the Driver. The mild steel is of course much softer, and much easier to machine, but even still it took a week to get the one prototype made. At the time we were producing the real ones from aluminium so originally the machines we were using to make the parts could handle that repeatedley with a very low scrap rate. When we began working in stinaless steel from our backers feedback, the stainless steel was even harder to get right. You may remember the stainless steel barrel that was released as an add-on in the original Kickstarter, and you can see below just a few of the issues we encountered during the machining process. Milling the pin holes resulted in the alignment being off, and the slot for the barrel pin wasn't parallel. Getting these issues nailed took a lot of work, and even then they still had to go through a rigorous QC process and some required bedding in before they were good to send. Because of this, we knew that a fully stainless steel Driver just wasn't possible with the tools and machines we had available. But then... About four months ago, we started working with a Swiss-type CNC machining centre, and we knew our dream of a stainless steel Driver was in reach. The new CNC lathe gave us the ability to create the intricate detail required for the Driver in the toughest stainless steel. The Swiss-type is designed specifically for this high level of tolerance on hard to machine metals, and the results speak for themselves. You can see the hand turned prototype on the left compared with the shiny solid steel on the right. With this we we able to make the barrel repeatedley and also the more detailed bit holder handle, so every stainless steel Driver will have built-in bit storage. I think this is the tool I've been the most excited about us making!

We've recently taken in a big delivery of parts for Pocket Driver and we couldn't be more excited! We've got the second pre-production run of the leather pouches and pocket packs and we're really impressed with how these are looking. We can't wait to get the rest! We've also taken in the bit sets for the pocket pack, as well as the imperial and metric bit sets. There's a fair few boxes in our warehouse right now just full of little bits! We've now got all the ancilliary bits, from the PZ2 bits to the quick release bits. Receiving big deliveries like this really hits home how close we are to fulfilment; just a couple of months away now!