View Factor Impero Inclino
Talk to any of the RED guys and they will tell you about Vaporware. They know all about and are very experienced in being patient waiting for gear, cameras and updates to be here already. One such 3rd party saga has a new leaf to a very long and very full RED coloured branch. The View Factor pay up front pre-order for the Impero and the Inclino Super Sized dramas may, I stress may have an ending in the positive. Read on for the latest from Curt von Badinski at View Factor.
Its been awhile since we have given an update and I apologize. Last June we decided that any effort to use outside vendors was useless – especially Asian suppliers. After spending a fortune and close to 1.5 years of effort in Asia we decided to pull out and manufacture our products in the US. This was a tremendous loss on our part in tooling and parts but there comes a time where its pointless to fight any longer.
We brought all of our tooling back to the states and found that it was not usable to for the tolerances we needed. The majority of the parts we did receive from China we total garbage. The motors we had been manufacturing in China had to be re-sourced in the US and unfortunately there aren’t many options on that front so we had to source that from one of the few reputable vendors we knew of. Unfortunately we could not afford to re-tool the custom motor from the original design so the Inclino was re-designed to work with the motors that were available to us. After a few months of waiting (and a lot of money) we now have the motors we need.
There are still outstanding refunds that we are trying to take care of and have had a few customers mentioning lawsuits. We are doing everything we can to get money back to those of you that have asked for refunds while still staying in business and trying to get a product out to those of you who have waited so patiently. Several customers are getting incremental refunds and we are trying to get those customers that still remain taken care of as soon as possible.
We have been criticized for shipping new products whilst not shipping existing ones. Our only defense is that the cost of bringing a simple cage design with minimal mechanical tolerances to market is much easier and faster than a fully functioning follow focus system. With the revenues from selling cages we managed to purchase motors, bearings, connectors and prototypes as well as lease a CNC lathe and mill to manufacture our parts in-house.That said, we want to give you and idea of what you can expect from us. We are currently making parts for the Inclinos and Imperos. We plan to have systems shipping in March and have enough components to fulfill all outstanding orders along with replacing older systems that have already been shipped. Those customers who have already received a system from us will have the option of sending their system back to us for a replacement with the new design. We will send out emails in March to those customers with instructions.
As for features, the new controller has everything the old design had and more. The motors are now only 3/4″ (19mm) wide. It is a worm design that is silent and smooth (ie no vibration). The new design will allow the Inclino to be used with other manufacturers controllers and will allow Impero to control standard digital motors from other manufacturers. The amplifiers are no longer in the motor but are in the receiver. The receiver is a modular system that allows you to expand as you need more motors – you can stack up to 8 units. The controller is now a 3-axis FIZ. The motor, receiver, and controller are machined from billet aluminum.
We have not determined what the pricing changes are going to be as of yet. Expect to have info on that in the next few weeks. All existing orders will be transitioned over to the new design and no additional charges will be applied.
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