Just got sent these from a customer, really glad to hear people are enjoying them.
Short update:
I should be getting together with my partner this week. We got some interesting information to work with and hopefully I’ll have some neato stuff when the week is over to have for show and tell. After this, as far as I can tell, the design should be fully tweaked and basically good to go (other than addressing the dead zone) in the next order. To anyone who’s provided feedback I thank you. There’s a ton of shit I didn’t think about prior to this first wave out, it’s been incredibly helpful.
If anyone didn’t know already, you can pick these guys up at Focus Attack currently. They are also the ONLY place to get them right now. I haven’t opened up orders on my own site for various reasons. After finishing my adjustments, the obvious next step is reduction in price. I’m going to try really hard to bring the price down to something better, it’s just very hard to do with something like this when you don’t have the sheer capital to put on the line. Anyone who’s picked one up already, your support is hugely appreciated.
Got mine the other day, and while I haven’t been able to play test it I have gave it a few test-whirls, and honestly am pretty freaking impressed with it!
Thanks guys, I’m glad you like them. Tell your friends!
Me too, I’d love to branch over to other standards. Just need to get things settled and proper with the design and this version first. Luckily once that happens I can’t imagine moving over would be terribly hard.
you may want to increase the diameter of the slit that the e-clip goes into. mine randomly came off and i pulled the entire shaft out of my TE
first time it’s happened in over a month
hey phreakazoid just dropping by this thread to thank you for such an awesome product! I can finally carry my stick around my bag without it being awkward, and all my friends are mind blown when i show them how easy it is to pull it off. you’re definitely gonna have a few more orders =]
Duly noted, I was going to widen it anyway but thanks for the head’s up on that one. Have you squeezed the E clip in a little more since then? I haven’t had to do that in mine in any of my testing, nor with any others I’ve installed.
Can you elaborate? You saw what, Vicko’s come out, or someone else’s?
Thanks for the kind words, I’m glad you (and your friends) like it. FA should have them re-stocked fairly soon.
So from now on, any new units (including the ones currently restocked to Focus Attack) will have a slight change to them. Below is the comparison. While this does not address the deadzone issue, it’s still a good step until I can get new ones actually made with the alterations. The top one is an unadjusted base piece assembly. While many were better than this, it’s a good example of what some have shown in earlier units. That’s not to say those don’t work just fine (obviously they do), but there was room for improvement. The bottom one is an assembly with a manually adjusted base piece (Read: Grinder with a fine finish, better than the machine shop).
What’s going to happen is this. Once I’ve got FA fully restocked, I’ll probably offer up the adjusted base pieces at a low rate for anyone who wants a comparison or just feels an improvement would do them good. Not sure how I’ll go about that yet, I’ll keep people posted. Thanks again for the support and feedback on this project, it seems to grow every day and makes me super proud.
Nice Phreak, good to see that there’s still progress on this.
On a side note, my recent experiences with my Link:
sanded/countersunk the inner edge of my Tek-Innovations arrow-dustwasher stopped it from being lifted up every time I tilted the joystick
I normally use Toodles’ GT-C circular restrictor gate on my JLFs; however, I find with the enhanced deadzone on the Link, hitting the diagonals is really vague, more so than usual. So I swapped out the GT-C with a GT-Y (octo-gate). I’m guessing this isn’t an issue with most people since I’m sure the majority use the stock square-gate anyways.
I had a friend (who’s not an arcade-stick-gamer) come over for some SF4 last week; he was pretty rough on the stick and the Link popped apart only once in about 10 hours worth of gamplay. Haven’t had it happen myself, though.
Oh yes there’s definitely still progress. Holidays slowed things up a bit but I’m still very much on top of the product and how to make it the best it can be.
If it wasn’t apparent though, the comparison shows a distance for the collar but what comes with that is a very large increase in yield strength. One of these days I’ll do a comparison of what someone might currently have to the new one in terms of pulling it apart with raw force. It’s a significant difference and I’m excited that this is the jumping point for a consistent strength across all units. That means that someone would really only need a newer base piece to see this difference.
The obvious next step when I can eventually do so is to address the other issues (deadzone in particular), but that will come in due time.
Oh, and coloring too, that’s on the back burner but I do want to look into collar coloring and such.
I received a telegram sent by the “Ministry of Arms” (dunno what I’d call it) stating the shipment has been retained for containing “material from controlled products that require the presentation of a license/authorization or the justification for the absence thereof”. The way this is worded in Portuguese makes it unclear what they meant: they could be referring to the stick itself (thinking it was meant for an illegal casino or something) or one of the materials used to build it. I haven’t sought clarification from them yet, but would you have any suspicions material-wise?
No, it’s entirely stainless steel and there’s nothing in it except springs and ball bearings… none of which are suspicious materials. That’s a really weird problem, keep me posted on what they say after you ask for clarification.
I’m really annoyed by this and don’t know if this is a resolvable situation. I sent an e-mail to the address mentioned in the telegram ( prctegeara at correios dot com dot br ), but that’s only the post-office department responsible for “controlled products”, and after their one reply (I’m waiting for a second reply that is starting to feel unlikely to arrive) it seems they can’t help me. They’re just the delivery people, not the ones responsible for seizing the package. I’ll attempt to contact the “army guys” (“Ministério do Exército” means literally “Ministry of the Army”), but the situation looks grim. Brazilian bureaucracy is the worst in the world (e.g., there is a gazillion departments that are practically oblivious to one another).
I have no idea if that would’ve made a difference, and I don’t even know if you haven’t done this, but I think I should recommend that some sort of document stating what The Link actually is be included in shipments to other countries, so nobody gets the wrong idea.
