Hei hei everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving weekend to our American friends - we hope you all got to spend a wonderful time with your family and friends! Here's our November update, and the news are all good. 

tl;dr

• We've implemented the additional waterproofing. Thank you for supporting us in this decision!
• We've started tooling, which is a major milestone. More details on the process are below.
• Manufacturing is on track for our updated schedule: We plan to ship the first units in May/June '22.
• We'd love to know more about you, your style of photography, and how you plan to use Fjorden. Fill out our survey and win a Polaroid Now+ Camera! The link is at the bottom of this update.

Additional waterproofing done!

We weren't sure how our community would react to the proposed tradeoff of adding extra waterproofing at the cost of a 3-4 week manufacturing delay - and we were blown away by your kindness and support! Lots of you voted in our new Fjorden Community, cheered us on, and voiced encouragement. The result was overwhelmingly in favour of adding the extra waterproofing:

So that's what we did. It turned out to be much more difficult than anticipated - we needed to fit extremely complex silicone shapes into tiny spaces. Our industrial design team was making a steady stream of 3D test prints. Here's Karin with a fresh batch of parts during the process:

In the end, we pulled it off! For example, here is a drawing of the silicone diaphragm protecting the shutter button, multi-function dial, and multi-function button:

We've also added O-rings and seals around the battery compartment and the rear body:

We'll share waterproofing test results for this updated design in a future update.

Manufacturing progress & tooling

Having implemented the waterproofing updates, we were ready to finalise the "DFM" (design for manufacturing). The level of detail and planning that goes into this is fascinating: Here, for example, is a capture of our weekly team meeting where we were looking at a mold flow analysis. The goal was to determine the ideal "gate position" (the place where the plastic gets injected into the steel mold) to achieve the strongest possible parts:

By the start of this week, we were ready to approve the tooling. Here's another behind-the-scenes shot of Karin going over all measurements one final time:

As a result, we've now officially started tooling! The tools are mind-blowingly complex. We feel they're as much a feat of engineering as they are a work of art! Milled from high-grade stainless steel, the parts, sliders, and ejectors fit together with the precision of a Swiss watch. Now imagine that watch being compressed by a force of 120 tons and injected with molten plastic, over and over again, tens of thousands of times! Here's what it will look like:

As of now, we're on track for our updated schedule: We plan to ship the first Fjorden units in May/June '22.

Help us improve Fjorden & win a Polaroid Now+ Camera! 

We want to build the best product we can for you. To do that, we'd love to learn more about you, your style of photography, and how you plan to use Fjorden. As a thank you, we'll be entering all survey respondents into a prize draw for a Polaroid Now+ Starter Pack:

Who doesn't love the instant gratification of Polaroids? So please help us improve Fjorden and win this baby by filling out this survey! 

Thank you and cheers from Oslo!

Victor