What happened to the original “BullseyeBore Disk” product that was on your website?
Several years ago, we introduced a prototype version of the BullseyeBore intellectual property and technology on our website called the “BullseyeBore Disk”. It was a first attempt at an implementation of the patented BullseyeBore drill alignment and depth technologies.
Our goal for that prototype was two-fold. First, we wanted to assess customer interest and determine if there was a market need. We discovered quickly that we were headed in the right direction. Within a couple months of introduction, the prototype videos had well over a million views (which was a lot for way back then). We also received a lot of positive feedback and suggestions from power drill users all over the world. The BullseyeBore Disk prototype, even in its somewhat bulky form, solved a significant problem for power drill users, which is worksurface alignment.
The second goal for the BullseyeBore Disk prototype was to get in into the hands of actual users for testing and feedback. We wanted to find out how they used it, what features were important, and how it could be improved. This process unfortunately took much longer that we expected.
We discovered during testing that we had to solve five issues:
- How to mount it to any common commercial electric drill or common drill chuck (without the hex shaft-based mount in the prototype),
- how to interoperate with standard drill bits and specialty drill bits (as opposed to the hex-shank-bit-only approach in the prototype),
- how to substantially reduce the laser module size and power requirements,
- how to make the overall product both smaller and ubiquitous during rotation, and
- how to make it super-safe to use.
Over the course of several years, we developed, implemented, and tested well over 300 prototypes. This lengthy R&D process included development of custom low power red and green lasers, creation of custom laser optics, testing of several hundred form factors, and perhaps most critically, development of a universal drill chuck attachment mechanism that emphasized user safety. The chuck attachment mechanism was an extremely difficult design challenge given the wide diversity of drills and chucks, but the solution turned out to be very elegant and has been tested on several hundred different drill and drill chuck combinations.
The result of the years-long development process is the BullseyeBore Core product line. The Core product line is the first of many patented drill and power tool alignment and depth products we plan to offer (yeah–there are a lot more great products on the way).
For those of you that have patiently waited for the first commercial version of the BullseyeBore power drill worksurface alignment product, thanks very much! Our goal has always been to release a great product that allows you to “Always Drill Straight”, and we think you will really like it.
