Group Manufacturing of Lancelot Heavy Duty 400Mhs Mining Board [CLOSED]

[blackarrow]

Hello Everybody!

Update: The Group Manufacturing is now closed

Our company had to refuse few people and group purchases placing big orders. However, as we are trying hard to make everybody happy we would like to try address this segment of the market.

What is Group Manufacturing?

The main problem with manufacturing Lancelot is that the Spartan 6 FPGA that we use is not immediately available. Xilinx (the manufacturer of these chips) is making them on order - 8 weeks delay. You'll notice that normal purchase of this Lancelot board is slow and there's a queue. The reason is that no company that has this IC in stock is selling at a price that makes it affordable for mining.
 
The FPGAs are very expensive and they make up for around 70% of the price device. We cannot afford to buy so many ICs without ensuring that we have customers to deliver them to. For this reason we came up with the concept of group manufacturing.

The concept of group manufacturing is similar with how groupon works: We gather all the people interested in purchasing large quantities of this device. Then we place the order with Xilinx and pay an advance for the FPGAs and, 8 weeks later when we receive the chips we pay the rest.

In order for this to work we will need the customers to:
- Pay 50% of the order upfront and 50% of the payment 1 week before your order is ready to be shipped. We plan to manufacture these in batches every 2 weeks (place an order with Xilinx every 2 weeks). If we have enough orders we might make them weekly.
- Understand and agree that there will be no refund of the advance payment if the deal is on (we've paid the money to Xilinx); however we will give the customer 1 Xilinx FPGA for each device canceled if he agrees to pay the shipping fee to get them.
- Understand and agree that no returns will be accepted.

If the amount of orders breaks Xilinx's price break threshold and we get a better price, we will reflect this in the price for the batch therefore you'll get a cheaper device.

Your payment has to be cleared by the deadline or your order will not be included in the batch.

What is Lancelot?
Details can be found on this page: http://www.cardreaderfactory.com/shop/lancelot-group-manufacturing.html

Where to order
Place your order here: http://www.cardreaderfactory.com/shop/lancelot-group-manufacturing.html

[Schrankwand]

In that case, what price point are we looking at?

[hashfiend]

In that case, what price point are we looking at?

The group buy page says $269 each:
http://www.cardreaderfactory.com/shop/lancelot-group-manufacturing.html

[davecoin]

- Understand and agree that there will be no refund of the advance payment; however we will give the customer 1 Xilinx FPGA for each device canceled if he agrees to pay the shipping fee.

If a customer makes a 50% down payment and you don't break the "price threshold" within a certain time frame by the May 19th deadline, does the customer get a full refund?

[blackarrow]

- Understand and agree that there will be no refund of the advance payment; however we will give the customer 1 Xilinx FPGA for each device canceled if he agrees to pay the shipping fee.

If a customer makes a 50% down payment and you don't break the "price threshold" within a certain time frame by the May 19th deadline, does the customer get a full refund?

There are multiple thresholds:
1. the minimum order (not known yet) - aka "deal is on" so we can make them at $269.
2. further discount (if we exceed a certain price break tresholds) - this is the threshold I was referring to

If the "deal is not on" the customer can choose to get the money back wait more until we get enough orders.
If the deal is on but we did not get further discounts from Xilinx, we'll have to make them at 269.

[jimmy3dita]

The description says that you include a power cable but there is no picture. Is it compatible with the ATX power Supply (that can be purchased with some optional cables), or it is something for molex?

Btw 9 weeks is a long time, if you offer some sort of buy-back for some Asics I'm in

[blackarrow]

The description says that you include a power cable but there is no picture. Is it compatible with the ATX power Supply (that can be purchased with some optional cables), or it is something for molex?

Note: This product requires a power supply. Please order it separately.

Btw 9 weeks is a long time, if you offer some sort of buy-back for some Asics I'm in

Yes, we'll do something like that.

[elchorizo]

blackarrow,

I have ordered 10 units from you and I'm happy with the 5 I've received so far. However, it seems to me that if you are trying to break a price threshold you should offer an incentive for people to buy more units in bulk.

Why not offer a discount if they purchase a minimum of 5? And an even bigger discount for 10, etc...

Ie, I'd be interested in ordering 20 or more if the price would come down to $220 per unit, etc.

[blackarrow]

blackarrow,

I have ordered 10 units from you and I'm happy with the 5 I've received so far. However, it seems to me that if you are trying to break a price threshold you should offer an incentive for people to buy more units in bulk.

We are unable to do that. Current FPGAs on the market are _very_ expensive. The suppliers that stock them decided to up the price with 25-40%. These market conditions are hostile, therefore the only way to bring the prices down is to buy from Xilinx. For this reason we set up this group manufacturing. Depending on how many orders there are we might lower the price but I cannot promise anything until we sign something with Xilinx.

Regards!

[dan99]

$269 is tooo expensive, even half of that is still expensive

[Schrankwand]

$269 is tooo expensive, even half of that is still expensive

Half of that is the actual price of the chips.

[bitpop]

Good idea. I'm sure people will be in once people like me receive the older batch.

[blackarrow]

$269 is tooo expensive, even half of that is still expensive

Please have a look here: http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?x=0&y=0&lang=en&site=us&KeyWords=XC6SLX150-2FGG484C

We need 2 of these IC to manufacture one Lancelot.

[neslekkim]

I think people are blinded of asics, these chips and cards are cards that can be reused for other things, the fpga is an rather powerful one for that price.

If it's to expensive, one can consider if waiting forever for asics are expensive or not, atleast, with either fpga (that uses less power, etc) or gpu (that uses lot of power) should be used while playing the waiting game on asics.

Asics are there, but not readily available, for still some time..

[bitpop]

I'm sure these fpgas can be ebayed too

[gopher]

subscribing

[jimmy3dita]

I'm already in with 20

[Amph]

$269 is tooo expensive, even half of that is still expensive

Please have a look here: http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?x=0&y=0&lang=en&site=us&KeyWords=XC6SLX150-2FGG484C

We need 2 of these IC to manufacture one Lancelot.

this mean that fpga are bad, and should not be used for mining

[Pionwave]

Blackarrow,

How many did you get in the current round for group manufacture?

Curious to see how many others have taken up on it.

[bitpop]

I should be getting 20 soon.