Important Kelvin Update
over 3 years ago – Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 11:24:05 PM

Hello Kelvin Community,

As you know, we’ve been working with our third-party engineering partner over the past several weeks to better understand the root causes and real-world frequency of the issues we’ve identified. Based on our review of the current state of the issue and our comprehensive assessment of potential paths to resolving it (detailed under “What Led to This Decision,” below) we have concluded that we will not be able to complete production of the Kelvin roaster, and will not be fulfilling backer rewards from the Kickstarter campaign. Full refunds will be provided to every backer; more information on this below.

As with all decisions along this journey, we did not make this one lightly, and have assessed all possible options before making it. With the technical constraints of the device at this late stage in production, we cannot feasibly and viably achieve a solution that balances roast quality and user experience. Delivering a lower-quality product is simply unacceptable to us, as we hold ourselves to the highest standards of design, quality, and user experience.

The entire Kelvin Roaster team wants to thank you for your support and patience throughout this journey, and we especially appreciated your words of encouragement in this last difficult phase.

REFUNDS

We will be refunding every dollar you spent to fund the launch of the Kelvin Roaster—including the 8% that Kickstarter takes before we receive the funding. This means that we are providing you with a full refund out of our own pocket.

We will begin the refund process on April 30, and will be submitting refunds to the original payment method used for your pledge during the Kickstarter campaign. If the payment method used for your pledge is no longer valid, we will process your refund via PayPal. If you already know that your card has expired and you need to receive your refund via PayPal, please send us an email at [email protected] before May 31 with your PayPal information so we can process your refund. If you do not send us your information for the date listed above, we will attempt to process your request to the payment method used for your pledge. Please note that if you opt to receive a PayPal refund, Kelvin will not cover any additional PayPal processing fees associated with the transaction.

Due to the number of backers in our community, we ask that you please be patient as we work to begin the refund process. Our team will be working to ensure everyone is properly refunded, and are happy to answer any questions you may have at this time. We anticipate that it will take approximately two months to complete all refunds.

As always, feel free to contact us with any questions at [email protected], and for information regarding refunds email [email protected].

Best,

The Kelvin Home Coffee Roasting Company

WHAT LED TO THIS DECISION?

As you know, we discovered a series of interrelated issues several months ago that led us to pause production. The issues centered on the temperature within the roasting chamber, which we found to be causing deformation of some plastic parts under certain circumstances. When we found this deformation, we halted production to investigate further and find a solution that prevented the deformation.

We found and implemented solutions to sufficiently reduce the occurrence of deformation, but through further testing, we found that the heat causing deformation was also correlated to the production of smoke during roasting. Smoke is inherent to coffee bean roasting—it’s what happens when the beans and chaff overheat, much like oil in a hot frying pan. Throughout the product development process, we’ve anticipated that small amounts of smoke would be a natural part of most roast cycles. However, we found during this testing that smoke was emitted at higher volumes, and more frequently, than we are comfortable with, given the standards we hold Kelvin to. Reducing the potential for high-volume smoke to occur during roasting became our focus over the last few months, across several rounds of testing and iteration.

We know that several factors play a role in how quickly high-volume smoke is produced during the roasting cycle, including environmental factors like room temperature and humidity; qualities of the beans, including weight and varietal; electrical inputs, like nominal wall voltage, variance from nominal voltage (often caused by distance from the power plant), and AC frequency; and qualities inherent to any individual unit, such as fan speed. As we sought a solution that could reduce the possibility of high-volume smoke, it was important for us to understand the relative importance of each of these factors in causing smoke, which was the focus of our work with our engineering partner.

Ultimately, the version of the home roaster that we originally envisioned and designed has proven not viable to prevent an unacceptable amount of smoke, while also maintaining a high standard of roast quality. While we’ve tried a multitude of re-engineered solutions this year and put them back into testing, the amount of redesign and re-engineering necessary for this concept is simply not viable for the Kelvin business at this time. We hold Kelvin to a high bar, so once we understood that none of our options for retrofitting the existing units could meet our standards, we made the difficult decision to end the Kelvin project.

THANK YOU

Although this is not the ending we had hoped for, we want to reiterate how appreciative we are of the tremendous support from our backer community, and your willingness to stay with us through this long journey.

Status Update
over 3 years ago – Wed, Mar 17, 2021 at 07:15:11 PM

Greetings Backers,

You have not heard an update from us because we’ve had to make some hard decisions about the future of the Kelvin Home Coffee Roasting Company and, most importantly, do what’s right for our community of supporters. By and large, you have been incredibly supportive as we’ve encountered engineering and manufacturing issues with the Kelvin Roaster.

1. Contacting Kelvin

Please know that if you have questions regarding anything that has to do with Kelvin you can always email/contact [email protected].

2. Kelvin is Still Moving Forward - And We Invite you to Stay with Us

We are moving forward with another round of engineering fixes. In the past month, we have brought in a new engineering partner to focus on two critical issues. We think delivery will optimistically be late 2021. We believe we’ll have an updated delivery schedule by the end of April.

3. Request a Refund

If you do not wish to wait for your Kelvin any longer while we address the current engineering issues, we certainly understand and encourage you to seek a refund. We have operationalized a refund process. If you would like a refund, please email [email protected]. We are proud supporters of the crowdfunding process, and while we know that many campaigns do not refund their backers, we believe it is right and imperative to refund backers who request them, as much as you can. In our case, we’re going one step further. We are offering to refund every dollar you spent to fund the launch of the Kelvin Roaster - including the 8% that Kickstarter takes before we receive the funding. This means that we are providing you with a full refund out of our own pocket.

Thank you for your support and patience during this project. We are working diligently to deliver Kelvin, and will provide you with a clear update on the path forward once the engineering team completes its analysis.

- The Kelvin Team

Production Update
over 3 years ago – Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 12:48:04 AM

Greetings Backers,

As we look ahead in 2021, we want to update you on where we stand and what’s up next for Kelvin.

As you know, we discovered a series of interrelated issues in 2020 that led us to pause Kelvin roaster production. These issues centered on the temperature within the roasting chamber, which caused cosmetic blemishes to some parts of the roaster under certain conditions. We halted production and have implemented a solution that prevents these blemishes from occurring.

We discovered that the roast performance was still not up to a standard we are comfortable shipping to our backers during subsequent testing, so we’re continuing to analyze and refine performance.

Our team is taking all the necessary steps to ship Kelvin as soon as possible, and will provide a timeline update when we can narrow in on a more concrete path forward.

SOLUTION OVERVIEW

Our solution explorations span electrical components, sensors, and more. Any change made to the product requires extensive testing of multiple machines, using various beans, and testing numerous environmental conditions, which is why this delay has lingered into the new year.

As we continue investigations into these various solution paths, we expect that this work will take us months to complete. As a result, you can expect the next updates to be spaced farther out than our past few because of the current work stage’s heads-down, no-news nature.

As always, we focus on bringing Kelvin to market and will continue to work toward that goal. We are dedicated to this community of backers, and we know that all of you also feel every disappointment and frustration we have ourselves. Thank you for being on this journey with us—talk soon!

Best,

Team Kelvin

Quick Update
almost 4 years ago – Tue, Oct 27, 2020 at 02:59:14 AM

Greetings Backers,

We wanted to check-in to briefly update you on our progress over the past few weeks.

As mentioned in our last update, our team is working towards implementing a solution that optimizes roast performance across a variety of environmental conditionals worldwide.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve had productive discussions with our manufacturing partner, identifying ways to optimize wall voltage performance while maintaining key product principles including, safety, user experience, and roast performance. To ensure we deliver the best product experience, we must take a few steps back in the production process. We want to assure you that we are taking all the necessary steps required to keep Kelvin production moving forward, and look forward to sharing a more detailed update in the future.

While it is typical for first-time production runs to experience delays, we understand it has been a long wait for our backers to receive their Kelvins and we appreciate your patience.

As always, we will post an update with a peek into the decision-making process, along with an updated timeline as we hone our solution to this variability. If you have any questions, please feel free to send us a direct Kickstarter message or email us at [email protected], and we’ll be happy to help.

Best,

Team Kelvin

Production Update
almost 4 years ago – Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 03:34:58 PM

Greetings Backers,

This update, we’ll take a look at the progress made since our last post and next steps moving forward. Let’s dive in…

OVERVIEW

Our last update explained that production is currently paused as we work to test possible solutions for an issue found in our quality inspections. After extensive testing, we have identified that the root cause is the performance variance within the range of household wall voltages.

We found that the current software implementation does not meet our performance quality standards when testing edge cases for some of the higher voltages in a small number of countries. Thus, we have decided to keep production paused for now and implement a software solution to eliminate any performance uncertainty around these edge cases. Our backer community includes customers from over 40 countries worldwide, and we want to ensure that all of our backers have the best experience using our high-quality product.

We are confident that the proposed programming changes will result in better user experience and improved product longevity. Unfortunately, this means we will not begin shipping backer orders before the end of the year. We will share a progress update in Mid-October with more clarity around a delivery timeline.

Although this comes as disappointing news for our backer community and our team, we will continue to take the necessary steps towards quickly resuming production and shipping Kelvin as soon as possible. Our team holds Kelvin to high safety and quality standards and wants to ensure our final product meets internal performance requirements. Most of all, we want you, our backers, to have the best possible experience enjoying your Kelvin Roaster.

NEXT STEPS

The first step toward resuming production is creating and testing the updated software program. This includes testing Kelvin at different household wall voltages and evaluating roast profiles to make sure our adjustments mitigate poor performance at edge case wall voltages. We’ve already begun this process and are well on our way to identifying the necessary changes.

After our internal testing is complete, our manufacturer will mass-produce the new PCBA program and finish assembling the units.

Q&A

Will a program change impact roast performance?

The short answer is no. The purpose of a programming change is to produce a high-quality roast, including edge case wall voltage. We’re working to fine-tune each roast profile to optimize performance within the household wall voltage ranges found around the world. Our team holds Kelvin to a high performance standard, and we are determined to ship you a product that creates all your favorite roasts!

How do I know a roast profile change will fix the issue at hand, and production will resume in the near future?

We have tested a wide variety of roast profiles since the Kickstarter launch, and the collected data will help us narrow in on creating updated roast profiles. Findings from previous rounds of testing will also allow us to quickly eliminate specific options and reduce the time spent testing each profile.

When will I receive my Kelvin?

As we learn more in the coming month, we will update backers with a new timeline as soon as we solidify our product adjustments. Stay tuned for an update Mid-October with progress from testing and an updated delivery timeline!

Again, we want to thank our fantastic backer community for your continued support during this process. Our team is confident that Kelvin will be worth the wait, and you will be roasting coffee in your kitchen in the near future! As always, please feel free to reach out with any questions by sending us an email at [email protected], or send us a direct Kickstarter message, and we’ll be happy to help.

Best,

Team Kelvin