NEUTRINO AND THE MAGIC LIVE RELEASE STRUGGLE
NEUTRINO looks effortless. Twelve pieces of stainless steel slide together into a solid block, and a playing card passes right through it. What nobody saw was the weekend it almost didn’t happen.
Dozens of Iterations
NEUTRINO went through dozens of iterations. First came countless 3D-printed prototypes, then precision-machined aluminum, and finally precision CNC-machined 303 stainless steel. We’d started on it months earlier, set it aside, then picked it back up and poured a good part of our summer into it.
Packaging
We bought a hot foil stamping machine for this product, created new artwork and CNC machined our own foil-stamp dies. The first iteration needed some changes because the center of pressure wasn’t lined up with the center of the press, which caused an uneven stamp. After a quick redesign we were back in business and foil stamped our custom boxes. Laser cutting the foam inserts was fairly trivial, since we’ve packaged other products this way.
The Deadline
Then, at a business planning meeting, we said it out loud: NEUTRINO would premiere at Magic Live! in Las Vegas. The plan was simple. Finish by close of business Friday, and Sam would take it to Vegas on Saturday or Sunday. Simple plans have a way of falling apart.
Friday Looked Grim
Friday morning, the CNC was just finishing up the last parts and everything was on schedule. By afternoon, it wasn’t. All week, Adam had been refining the CNC machining strategies to make the parts better and faster, and each change nudged the tolerances. The parts still worked and fit well when tested in pairs, which we did constantly. What he didn’t realize was that they didn’t fit together with the feel we wanted as a full assembly, and close enough isn’t good enough here at Sly Designs.
By Friday night the verdict was written on the parts themselves: ALL TOO TIGHT. We had a choice. Ship something that worked but was subpar, or scrap hundreds of parts and start over with the clock running out. We scrapped them.
Late that night, Adam took out the Sly Designs graph paper spiral notebook. He wrote down every failure, every lesson learned and a plan forward. Then we turned the CNC back on and got to work.
The Weekend Push
Saturday, we worked until 1 a.m. Sunday, 1 a.m. Monday, 1 a.m.
Monday became Tuesday. Sam finally walked out of the shop sometime after 2 a.m. with the finished NEUTRINOs and slept while his wife drove through the early morning hours to Las Vegas. Before noon on Tuesday, NEUTRINO was on Meir Yedid’s table for its premiere release. You can spot Meir’s table in the Magic TV video in our post about the release.
Worth Every Late Night
NEUTRINO sold out at Magic Live!, and Craig Petty said it “fooled me completely and totally.” Read how the release went.