We invested over a million dollars in our manufacturing process and infrastructure. This is the riskiest part of any hardware startup and investors on Wefunder are entering a part of the business where it is already derisked.

We do wish to reduce the size of the sensor in the future, but we'd like to take this opportunity to showcase our manufacturing design and production expertise.

It all starts off with creating designs and drawings of the plastic cases. The picture below is of the case of the BackAlert sensor.

Then you start 3D printing the prototypes and making circuit boards by hand to see if it all works.

Of course, you put them on users and see how they like it. Usually, there is a lot of user feedback, so you have to go back and adjust your designs and repeat the entire process.

Once that is done, then (if you have the funding and you generated demand to offset the cost of the tooling), then you move forward with production. Typically, you get the molds made, but sometimes there are numerous changes that need to be made to the tooling. This is where it gets very expensive. We had to make 8 mold changes in a month because we were breaking sensors during the sonic welding process (see below).

The pictures above are pictures of our manufacturing partners pulling the plastic parts from the machines. 

Note that it says "Enflux", which is the holding company of BackAlert. These are the production tools that are sitting in the plastic injection molding machine. 

The video below shows how we assemble the circuit board into the plastic case through a sonic welding machine. The sonic welding machine vibrates 20,000 times in one second to melt the plastic cases together for the final assembly. It emits a very high pitched sound, so turn down your volume. I swear my hearing is permanently damaged, but it's for a good cause!

Taa-daa! Finished sensors.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Doug Hoang
CEO