November Manufacturing Update: Rod Fix and Footage of Manufacturing

Because many of you are wondering how things are going, we wanted to share this short video of Instafloss parts in production.

You can also see how we’re taking extra care to keep your shiny new Instafloss from being scratched.

A few of you have asked what is going on with the piston rod. The good news is we have prototypes of an entirely new material:

(Prototypes in black. You can tell, if you look close, there is a small cosmetic mistake ;) )

These are rods custom machined out of Glass Reinforced Nylon 6. This material is Three to Four TIMES stronger than the previous plastic we had been using. We’ve already begun lifetime testing on this, and to shorten the process, we’ve also started production on a new mold.

We’re going with a new supplier for the new mold; one that specializes in fast turnaround times. Unfortunately they are more expensive, with each individual part costing 2.5x.

This was not a decision that we wanted to make. The original material was picked due to a high recyclability rating, and thus was one of the ways we intended to make Instafloss more eco-friendly. Glass reinforced plastics are not easily recycled. As we know with plastics, if it’s not easy to recycle, it goes to a landfill 99% of the time. Hopefully in the future, recycling methods become more efficient, and these parts can be recycled, but for now we’re going to have to make this trade off.

These have already been paid for and are under way. We’ll keep you in the loop as we always have. Thanks to some of the choices we've made, it appears we're dodging the worst case outcome mentioned in our last update, with manufacturing completing in early Q1.