Posted on

It’s hard to keep up with you guys!

Well, you guys have done it again… you’ve cleaned us out of kits!

We were back in stock for a few weeks there until you guys picked the shelves clean. We’re super excited about the high demand, and doing everything we can to meet it. We are reinvesting in our production facilities in our factory and increasing the production rate while maintaining an emphasis on quality control.

We expect to have our next production lot of Vruzend kits ready within two weeks or so, and to be fully restocked within three weeks. That should put us around the middle of August to begin shipping kits again.

Anyone who would like to go ahead and order their Vruzend kit while we are out of stock will get priority shipment when the new kits come in. If you’d rather wait to order yours until we’re restocked, that’s fine too. Just note that your shipping will be somewhat delayed while we are sending out kits to everyone who bought their kits during the backorder period.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment or visit us at the forums. Thank you all for your enthusiastic support!

Posted on

NEW: Samsung 33G 3,150 mAh 18650 cells are now available!

 

Hey guys,

Just wanted to give you all a quick update – we’ve just added some cool new cells to our offerings. In addition to the tried & true LG MJ1 3,500 mAh cells that we’ve been offering, we’ve just added the new Samsung 33G 3,150 mAh cell to our lineup!

This is an awesome new cell that was designed for electric vehicles applications, meaning its designed for long life and reasonably high capacity. A Samsung rep has stated it should last for 8 years when charged to 4.1 V. Even when charging to the full 4.2 V though, this cell is going to last a long time.

It’s not quite as high capacity as the 3,500 mAh LG cells that we offer, but it will last longer and is more affordable. It also has a bit lower max discharge rate than the LG cells, at 6.5 A continuous or 9.75 A peak. That’s absolutely more than enough for our Vruzend kits. For these cells, we recommend using more in parallel to get a great combination of max discharge rate and high capacity. And with the lower price, that’s even easier to do!

Let us know if you have any questions, and you can check out the new cells here.

Posted on

Shipping update

Hey Everyone,

We’re part way through shipping all of the orders that included backordered Vruzend kits. Despite the kits being on backorder, a lot of you were still committed to reserving your kits, which is awesome, but it left us with a massive pile of orders that now need to be filled all at once.

We’re shipping as fast as we can and expect to be caught up by the end of the week. That also means that any orders that come in this week likely won’t ship until next week.

We didn’t expect this level of excitement and demand that we’re experiencing from our awesome customers. Don’t worry though – we’re excited to meet the challenge. While we of course apologize for the delay that you guys are experiencing, we absolutely appreciate all the support you’ve given us!

Pretty soon, we’ll all be building the batteries of our dreams!

 

image credit [1]

Posted on

Vruzend kits are back in stock!

After a longer than expected wait, I’m happy to say that we are back in stock and shipping Vruzend kits again!

I really appreciate all of the patience that those of you with backordered kits showed us as we worked through a number of unexpected delays. We finally have our latest resupply shipments of kits on hand, with more than enough to cover all of the back orders.

Demand has been much higher than we expected. We are producing more kits as fast as we can in our modestly sized factory, and are investing in new machines to increase our production capacity. There still might be a future backorder situation though as we rush to meet the current demand.

We learned from this extended backorder experience though, and we’ll make sure the process goes smoother in the future.

Thanks again to all of our supportive customers who put up with us! Your support helps make the late nights and raw fingers worth it!

Posted on

LG MJ1 cells back in stock, Vruzend kits soon to be back in stock!

Hey everybody! A lot of you know that we’ve been out of stock of our Vruzend kits for a couple weeks now and of our 18650 LG MJ1 cells for about a week.

The LG MJ1 cells are now back in stock and shipping immediately!

The Vruzend kits should be back in stock by this weekend, and we hope to begin shipping on Monday. To give you a little more detail, the kits should be taking off from Mumbai on an air cargo flight within the day. We went with more expensive air freight to ensure that we can get your kits to you ASAP, instead of the slower but cheaper sea shipping. We’ll eat the extra cost ourselves and we’re working on increasing production so there won’t be backorders like this in the future.

We had hoped to have the kits even sooner, but had a number of unexpected delays along the way. (Did you know the end of Ramadan is a bank holiday that shuts down much of business in India for a few days? The more you know…)

Anyways, we really appreciate all of the patience and support you guys have shown us. We know its annoying to pay for something and have to wait for shipping, especially when it is part of a project that you are itching to start (or finish!) but we’re working as fast as we can here. You will all hopefully be getting “shipped” emails with tracking numbers soon. Thanks for hanging in there and as always, make sure you contact us or use the forum if you have any questions!

–Micah

Posted on

Tell us about your Vruzend DIY battery project!

Hey everyone, we’ve started receiving word back from happy customers telling us about their DIY projects using their new Vruzend battery kits, and we love what we hear. We’re hearing about examples from DIY powerwalls to electric bicycles and Ham radio battery packs. It’s inspiring to see how much creativity and ingenuity you guys have!

In fact, it gave us the idea to host a page on the site to feature some really cool examples of projects you guys have built. Tell us your story, along with some pictures of the build process, and we might feature it on the new Featured Projects page!

Thanks for sharing guys, and good luck with your battery-powered projects!

image credit: [Listverse]

Posted on

You guys bought all the kits…

Thanks guys, you gave us the “hug of death!” We’ve gotten a wonderful response since we began offering our Vruzend lithium battery assembling kits in the US. One issue has quickly arisen though: we underestimated the demand.

We’re frantically producing kits as fast as we can to meet the demand, but we’re down to the last few kits in our US warehouse, and are waiting for more to arrive from our factory. At this rate, in the next few hours, we’re going to be sold out of kits.

Don’t worry though, we’ll be taking backorders for kits, and they will all ship in the order that they were received. We expect to have our Vruzend kits back in stock in the US warehouse in the next 7-10 days. In the meantime, any orders for parts that don’t include a battery assembly kit (such as battery cells, tools, BMSs, books, etc) will ship immediately. If your order includes a backordered Vruzend battery assembly kit, then it will ship as soon as we can restock.

We really appreciate you guys bearing with us, and we’ll do our best to maintain a high level of production so we don’t have to take backorders again in the future.

Posted on

Shipping has begun!

Hey everyone, I was hoping to make this post a few days ago but we’ve been kept busy here at Vruzend. The USA warehouse began shipping on June 1st, and all pre-orders have been shipped out.

It turns out that we had an issue with our email system, and not everyone received an email with their tracking information. We do apologize for that and we are getting the system fixed so that everyone will get an automatic notification with their tracking information immediately upon shipment.

All orders that were placed since June 1st are currently experiencing an approximately 2-day wait before they are shipped as we play catch-up with the new orders. In the next couple of days, we should be all caught up and then shipping will usually occur on the day after the order is placed.

Thank you all for bearing with us as we expand our operation to the USA and smooth out any wrinkles in our brand new USA operations. We appreciate all of the support and words of encouragement we have received during this process. We are fully committed to providing the best DIY lithium battery building kit available at an affordable price, and you guys are helping us achieve that goal every day.

Our current plans for the future include offering a few more helpful battery building accessories in the shop (heat shrink, connectors, etc) and also expanding the accessory options in the international warehouse, so that you can get BMSs, 18650 cells and the other helpful battery building bits available on Vruzend.com from the international warehouse as well.

We’re also always working on improving the Vruzend kit and maintaining the highest levels of quality standards. We’ve recently moved to semi-automated production in our factory to keep up with the increased demand for our kits. This is an exciting time of expansion for us, and we owe it all to you guys. So once again, thank you all for being part of this awesome journey with us!

More to come soon!

–Micah

Team Vruzend

 

image credit [flickr]

Posted on

Kits are coming to the USA soon!

Hello everyone!

We’re super excited that you’ve been checking out the VRUZEND battery building kits. These kits are the culmination of years of R&D efforts to create the best battery building kit available! Developed carefully and painstakingly in India, these kits are designed to finally do away with cheap Chinese imitations and those finicky spot welders. With a VRUZEND kit, you’re getting a carefully crafted and expertly designed battery building system that is designed to be simple and easy to use.

We’re working hard on opening our USA warehouse, and we expect to be ready to start shipping orders in the US and Canada within the next few weeks. We’ve just got a little more work ahead of us (dusting out the spider webs, stacking the boxes, doing donuts on the fork lift, etc) and then we’ll be open for business in two hemispheres!

If you’re ready for a kit now, then please keep checking back with us. Any day now we’ll open up pre-orders and then start shipping ASAP. Thanks for hanging in there, and we really hope you enjoy our VRUZEND battery building kits!

–The VRUZEND team