Category: Business

Three things

Once again, things have been busy here! I’m currently processing orders, albeit with a small delay (manifold broke off the degassing chamber and I’m waiting for the glue to set).

There have been two major developments however.

UKFur
I’ve now purchased the UKFur merchandise shop from previous owner Tigerfire, who’s no longer as involved in the Furry scene as he once was.
In the next couple of days I should receive the first batch of new stock, to get a small number of the most in-demand shirts and sizes.

The three designs of shirt

It’s out of stock of the lanyards, but I’m looking around for a supplier that will provide them in minimum orders of less than £200.

However still have large numbers of vinyl stickers and silicone wristbands.

Confuzzled is just a month away now, so have no fear, you will be able to get your UKFur merch!

In the meantime though, wristbands are £1.50, stickers are 50p each.
B&W shirts are £10 in Small to XL sizes, and £11 in XXL and XXXL.
Blue shirts are £12 in Small to XL sizes, and £13 in XXL and XXXL.
£2 for postage, and I still take paypal.

If I’m out of stock, let me know the size you’re after so I can get more in and I’ll let you know when I do.

Chest sizes: S – 35/37″ M – 38/40″ L – 41/43″ XL – 44/46″ XXL – 47/49″ 3XL – 50/52″

Reprap
Shortly after buying the UKFur shop I also acquired a lot of 2000 surplus stepper motors.

All boxes full of motors (ignore the SEM bits)

I strongly believe the future is in 3D printers, but there’s a big supply issue. Even the home-made machines tend to require you to already have a 3D printer to make parts for it.
The way around this is to make a bootstrapping machine to make the initial parts. A rep-strap.

The motors I have are smaller than those advised in the Reprap project, but I have my own take on it. I’m developing a small, semi-portable 3D printer, that should be fairly cheap and easy to modify. I’m looking at a sale price in the £200 range, and a quantity of around 500 machines.
Because of the small size of these printers, I’m dubbing it the Bonsai Repstrap.

It’s an ambitious project I know! But if you want to follow how things are going with it, take a look at..

The Creative Blog
I’ve set up a journal over at Dreamwidth as a stand-alone creative blog. While this won’t be strictly business related, it will include and business creations and day-to-day activities as well as my personal works.
Dreamwidth incorporates RSS feeds into the blogs, so you don’t have to sign up to follow it. It also accepts OpenID logins, so you can comment if you like.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Contacted shirt supplier. Should be able make an initial small-order with a penalty fee, but it’ll get in the stuff there’s demand for.
Also enquired over getting patches made. Ballpark prices fairly reasonable. But don’t think I could get much of a markup on them. Still..

Received in the post today; 24 DIL sockets. Should allow quick replacement of the 4N35 photo-isolators on the parallel port breakout board I’ll be making for the Bonsai reprap. I really don’t want to kill the workshop PC, after-all. Nor do I want to have to re-solder the board when something inevitably goes sparkly-wrong.

Currently doing inventory on mobile shop stock. Almost there.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

First mail-order UKFur shirts have been posted.

Got a reply from the manufacturer, so can calculate more accurate prices now.

Also heard back from TOMPS. Will hopefully have the correct hardness rubber tomorrow. Just have to send back the Shore-60. Little suspect of them saying it should be fine in regular post, since they state it’s not when they’re sending it. Can understand they’d want to keep the postage cost down since they’ll be giving me a credit note as postage repayment.
Will pack it well and send as Recorded.

BIG clear-out is in progress here.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Busy busy bee.. or ladybug, since they’re everyfuckingwhere

Old 1.7Ghz machine is out of storage. Running diagnostics to see if I can isolate where the hardware problem is (I suspect the 80Gb boot disk), before installing Win2000 and a capture card on it. And nothing else.
Will also put the old 5.25″ floppy drive in it and see if any old disks still work.

Yesterdays castings are de-moulded. Unfortunately two sets show small areas of unmixed pigment. Will have to double-stage mix it from here on. Still, getting closer to high-resolution shots of all sets, as well as having display sets.

Called TOMPS, still no word yet. Sounds like the boss is out of the office a lot these past few days. Still, have someone wanting a footpad order, and won’t be able to honour it until I have the shore-80. It’s been a week since I emailed them about this.

Up to 9 Mendel brackets cast. Should have the rest needed in an hour or so. I’ll lock up again for a bit after that, get some artwork done, before casting some more pads in the evening.

Had a reply back from the connector company, wanting to know the pitch of the connector image I sent them. I thought I’d included that in my description. Yep. Ugh..

–

DorkBot London was very entertaining last night. My main point of confusion had always been that I’d never found where they talked online. Simple answer; they don’t. You go along, meet people and then communicate one-to-one. This seems surprisingly traditional for such a techno-arty field.
I suppose things like the 2600 meets are the same though. It just feels a little upside-down to me though, having mostly gone to groups or forums which then sparked real-world meetings.

EDIT: 5.25″ drive seems to be working intermittently. Will have to strip it down and clean it.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

More macro shots

Another batch of pads is packed up and ready to go.

First took the opportunity to re-photograph them all in macro mode properly though. Here’s the winning shots so far, cropped and resized to 75%.

About to go upload them to my DA and FA accounts.

More will be cast tomorrow before I head out to Dorkbot London in the evening. Means next order will ship friday, most likely.
Will also be casting up 12 reprap-Mendel frame brackets for the Bonsai Repstrap prototype. And I’ll get photos of the new colour mix.

Still no word from resins supplier. Will be phoning them tomorrow to get this Shore-80 situation sorted out.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]