Current Status

We’re in production at our little factory (Lab)! We’re building, testing and now, shipping RaceCapture pre-orders! The last few weeks of waiting for delayed inventory deliveries are now capping off with dawn-to-dusk (and beyond) work illuminated by the Lab’s 1500 watts of fluorescent lighting – which, in a way, is fine since Seattle this time of year has had little sunlight. In fact, there’s so little, our teammate Scott just informed us that we’ve had a normal year’s worth of rain in just the past 5 months! Armed with our Vitamain-D supplements it’s not a terrible time to be heads-down building the tech that you pre-ordered and patiently waited for. Let’s get to some details!

Production Work

Once the critical inventory rolled in, it’s been go, go, go on production, first focusing on the RaceCapture/Pro MK3 systems. Learning from the MK2 design, we’ve made some significant improvements both in manufacturability and the industrial design with more rugged and properly labeled connections (all on one side), more informative front panel with more indicators, a niftier ‘action’ button, and more – all in a brand new custom enclosure:

racecapturepro_mk3_assembled_units — We think they’re pretty damn sharp!

Building and testing

When producing electronics such as TVs, microwaves, smart phones, and race car electronics there’s a certain percentage of systems that fail QA test and need to be re-worked to resolve assembly defects – and passed through test again. While most will pass re-test, there are some that will fail regardless and are delegated to the scrap bin (or as we call it, the FAIL rack). We have a pretty big collection of circuit boards that failed test, often with errors that have been deemed not cost effective to resolve – so there they sit until they get recycled.

When we were in production with MK2, we paid attention and noted the areas where failures would typically happen. It seemed to pay off: so far the failure rate has been close to zero with RaceCapture/Pro MK3! Which is great – and we needed it – because it helped speed up production and subsequent delivery to you and your race car.

racecapturepro_mk3_assembly — Assembling circuit boards. You knew we built these in-house, right?

racecapturepro_mk3_rework_inspection — pre-work before reflow soldering

racecapturepro_mk3_reflow — Going through reflow. You don’t want to put pizzas through this oven!

Once the boards are built, we run them through an automated test procedure – which flashes the bootloader and runs the system through a battery of functional tests:

racecapturepro_mk3_test_jig — They call it a bed-of-nails tester. Is it because it’s designed to torture-test hardware? 🙂

This automated tester is practically a product unto itself – having both a hardware and software component. But what tests the tester? It’s turtles, turtles all the way down, I tell you.

Once units have passed test, they’re queued for final assembly – here’s some of the production work:

racecapturepro_mk3_boards_on_rack — A chunk of production that passed test, waiting for final assembly

Final Assembly

Clearly the best part of the process – the finish line is in sight! Also learning from MK1 and MK2 days, we designed the assembly to be as frustration-free as possible.

racecapturepro_mk3_sub_assembly — Preparing for assembly

racecapturepro_mk3_stacks — Assembly was so fast, we just have a disorganized stack of systems. Is that a lonely MK2 board sitting on the rack?

racecapturepro_mk3_assembled_stacked — That’s looking a bit more photo-worthy.

Boxing, shipping and into your race car

As exciting as it is to design, create, and build our products, the best part is getting them to you, our dealers and customers. We are thrilled to present these new versions of RaceCapture and are committed to your racing and track day experiences with RaceCapture and Podium being informative, fun, and entertaining. We look forward to your feedback and the sharing of your on track adventures!

stacking_boxes — Scott, our resident rock-stacking expert, can’t help but stack the shipping boxes as close to the ceiling as possible

racecapturepro_mk3_boxes — Packaging and shipping takes up some serious space

Coming Next

Next blog post: RaceCapture/Apex details and news on the latest RaceCapture firmware and app releases!