So, (and not for the first time)
I reached a lull in posting, not that I was doing nothing, but I had nothing to write about.
I've been doing a few projects, but have yet to write them up.
I'm going to start writing again, but perhaps at a slower frequency.
I've tried posting once every few days, (years ago) and found that far too hard to keep up with.
I wish I'd done once a week, then I'd still have a ton of posts cued for release.
I tried once a week, but without some hardcore time spent writing and having a stack ready and scheduled for release I couldn't keep on top of writing here, making else where and a job and a family!
So now I think I'll just post as and when I need to. when I'm inspired to write a lesson, rather than looking for stuff to pad a blog, and posting when I have completed a project rather than trying to do smaller projects so that I can update more frequently.
Showing posts with label excuses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label excuses. Show all posts
Monday, October 14, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
Mass production, tooling, strategies and budgeting.
This blog could be titled, How to get it wrong.
I'll start with the story, then I'll point out the failings.
A few weeks ago I made a new heater for my solidoodle 3d printer, I was quite happy with the results, despite having broken a drill bit in my heater block, I got around that, and I decided that was my fault, I clearly wasn't drilling the hole straight, it was a small drill bit, and they often break anyway...
When I bought the aluminium bar to make the hot end I had decided that I would probably want to make something else anyway, so I got a 2 meter length.
After making that first hot end I decided that I was going to make and sell a whole load.
I had enough aluminium bar, I had bought a hundred heaters at the start of the project, (knowing that I could sell the heater elements on their own!)
So I started cutting up that long bar of aluminium into 100 small pieces.
by about the 3rd piece I gave up and went to ebay and bought a small hobby band saw. -this worked great for cutting the aluminium, right up until the blade broke -though this had come with the saw, (which only cost £30), and had made 99 cuts, -failing on the last)
After this I got my set square and scribe and marked out where I needed to drill holes on all 100 blocks that I had cut. then I centre punched them. -this is time consuming, that was 600 holes that I marked!
After this was done I decided that I'd start drilling, rather than drilling by hand I decided that I'd use my fathers pillar drill, a Draper tool, I dutifully loaded the drill bit into the chuck, and set about drilling holes, I started by drilling 2.5mm hole through all of the holes I'd marked, a lot of the holes needed to be 2.5mm, others would benefit from a pilot hole being drilled anyway.
However I found that on the point where the hole for holing the thermistor met the hole for the screw securing the thermistor, the drill bit would catch and break. this was the same problem I'd had with the hand drill, but now I was getting this with a machine drill, one that was square, level and had no lateral forces, clearly there was a problem with the way that the cut was being made, swarf from the hole was catching and causing the bits to break at an alarming rate.
Eventually I managed to get a few holes drilled carefully that did meet, (afterwards I bought some 2.5mm end mills that I would use in the drill to make these holes meet more successfully!
At the end of the time I had set aside that day I had 11 pieces half made, I had the holes for the thermistor set-up drilled successfully, and the long hole through the block pilot drilled. at this point I'd been at it around two hours, and decided that was enough... -and besides the drill had gotten quite warm and I thought it could use a rest!
One morning the following week I decided that I'd continue my project. however within ten minutes of starting the drill the motor had caught fire.
In the end I took the pieces home and finished the first batch with a hand drill.
I tapped them and installed the heater elements.
As it's a new month I've been paid and gotten some more money to spend on this project I've now ordered the thermistors, wire and heat shrink to finish these heaters up.
So... let's look at where I went wrong.
First, I'm hoping to sell these for around £12 - £14, this is in line with what others have sold for on Ebay.
the heaters were £130 + £15 import VAT for 100
Aluminium bar was £10
Thermistors are£70 for 100
heat shrink is £5 for the 6m of 1mm heat shrink I need
and £3 for the 5m of 3mm heat shrink I need.
wire is around £2 for 10 meters, (and I need 200meters) so £40
the grub screws cost around £15
So a quick sum up looks like I'm nearly £250 in the hole with materials.
Postage on each item is expected to be around £1. (so that's another £100)
Ebay will take ~£2 per item, (£200)
and pay pal will also want their 10% (£1.40 per item, times 100 = £140)
so that'll be around £700 of costs.
I'm hoping to sell these for a total of £1400
but here's where the problem starts....
now take roughly 25% of that away in taxation and national insurance that I'll need to declare. that's £175, leaving £525
Trying to do this cheaply has meant that I broke around £5 of drill bits whilst trying to make the blocks, and that £10 saw blade for the band saw.
(leaving £510)
I'd busted my dads pillar drill, because it's a hobby tool, not an industrial tool, it's meant to spend about 30 seconds being on, then have ten minutes to cool down, now spend nearly three hours in constant use, so that it over heats, and breaks down the insulation, (and then catches fire)
a complete replacement is around £300, second hand maybe £150, or a new motor will be around £100
My "profit" is now a pretty shabby £400...
then I spend a couple of hours cutting up the aluminium bar, a few more hours in front of the drill, a couple of hours sourcing materials, I'll conservatively spend probably 15 minutes per item with listing on ebay, talking to buyers, packaging and going to the post office to actually post the things.
(that's 1500 minutes, or about 30 more hours). I spend around an hour designing the thing in the first place.
Based on the initial ten I have that's 6 hours of machining and making,
So that 100 will be about 60 hours of machining, plus 30 hours of listing and posting.
So that £400 I've got remaining will need to pay for about 100 hours work. about 2/3rds minimum wage.
in other words.
I started out thinking, cool, the parts for this will make me loads of money, I'll spend about £2.50 on an item that I can sell for £14.
But,
using hobby tools has increased costs due to breakages.
Using hobby tools has meant that I can't work for more than an hour at a time without significant machine downtime to cool off, increasing the amount of time take to produce parts.
Funding this venture myself has meant that I've had to wait until pay day to get more funding. - I could have taken this to a kikstart project, but them I'd have 100 angry customers breathing down my neck saying that my lack of planning or prep wasn't their fault, and where is their money etc.
The long and the short of it is:
before you decide that you want to give up your day job and live the dream of running a tech startup. do your sums first. be realistic.
I was wishfully thinking that I might get around £700 for what would be an easy day stood at a band saw and a drill. -actually I was thinking I could use an ordinary hack saw to do this work!
What I though would be around £100 per hour I'll retired a millionaire next week, has actually resulted in being a drain on time and resources. Maybe with a few thousand pounds of investment for industrial tooling I'd do better -but I doubt that also!
I'll start with the story, then I'll point out the failings.
A few weeks ago I made a new heater for my solidoodle 3d printer, I was quite happy with the results, despite having broken a drill bit in my heater block, I got around that, and I decided that was my fault, I clearly wasn't drilling the hole straight, it was a small drill bit, and they often break anyway...
When I bought the aluminium bar to make the hot end I had decided that I would probably want to make something else anyway, so I got a 2 meter length.
After making that first hot end I decided that I was going to make and sell a whole load.
I had enough aluminium bar, I had bought a hundred heaters at the start of the project, (knowing that I could sell the heater elements on their own!)
So I started cutting up that long bar of aluminium into 100 small pieces.
by about the 3rd piece I gave up and went to ebay and bought a small hobby band saw. -this worked great for cutting the aluminium, right up until the blade broke -though this had come with the saw, (which only cost £30), and had made 99 cuts, -failing on the last)
After this I got my set square and scribe and marked out where I needed to drill holes on all 100 blocks that I had cut. then I centre punched them. -this is time consuming, that was 600 holes that I marked!
After this was done I decided that I'd start drilling, rather than drilling by hand I decided that I'd use my fathers pillar drill, a Draper tool, I dutifully loaded the drill bit into the chuck, and set about drilling holes, I started by drilling 2.5mm hole through all of the holes I'd marked, a lot of the holes needed to be 2.5mm, others would benefit from a pilot hole being drilled anyway.
However I found that on the point where the hole for holing the thermistor met the hole for the screw securing the thermistor, the drill bit would catch and break. this was the same problem I'd had with the hand drill, but now I was getting this with a machine drill, one that was square, level and had no lateral forces, clearly there was a problem with the way that the cut was being made, swarf from the hole was catching and causing the bits to break at an alarming rate.
Eventually I managed to get a few holes drilled carefully that did meet, (afterwards I bought some 2.5mm end mills that I would use in the drill to make these holes meet more successfully!
At the end of the time I had set aside that day I had 11 pieces half made, I had the holes for the thermistor set-up drilled successfully, and the long hole through the block pilot drilled. at this point I'd been at it around two hours, and decided that was enough... -and besides the drill had gotten quite warm and I thought it could use a rest!
One morning the following week I decided that I'd continue my project. however within ten minutes of starting the drill the motor had caught fire.
In the end I took the pieces home and finished the first batch with a hand drill.
I tapped them and installed the heater elements.
So... let's look at where I went wrong.
First, I'm hoping to sell these for around £12 - £14, this is in line with what others have sold for on Ebay.
the heaters were £130 + £15 import VAT for 100
Aluminium bar was £10
Thermistors are£70 for 100
heat shrink is £5 for the 6m of 1mm heat shrink I need
and £3 for the 5m of 3mm heat shrink I need.
wire is around £2 for 10 meters, (and I need 200meters) so £40
the grub screws cost around £15
So a quick sum up looks like I'm nearly £250 in the hole with materials.
Postage on each item is expected to be around £1. (so that's another £100)
Ebay will take ~£2 per item, (£200)
and pay pal will also want their 10% (£1.40 per item, times 100 = £140)
so that'll be around £700 of costs.
I'm hoping to sell these for a total of £1400
but here's where the problem starts....
now take roughly 25% of that away in taxation and national insurance that I'll need to declare. that's £175, leaving £525
Trying to do this cheaply has meant that I broke around £5 of drill bits whilst trying to make the blocks, and that £10 saw blade for the band saw.
(leaving £510)
I'd busted my dads pillar drill, because it's a hobby tool, not an industrial tool, it's meant to spend about 30 seconds being on, then have ten minutes to cool down, now spend nearly three hours in constant use, so that it over heats, and breaks down the insulation, (and then catches fire)
a complete replacement is around £300, second hand maybe £150, or a new motor will be around £100
My "profit" is now a pretty shabby £400...
then I spend a couple of hours cutting up the aluminium bar, a few more hours in front of the drill, a couple of hours sourcing materials, I'll conservatively spend probably 15 minutes per item with listing on ebay, talking to buyers, packaging and going to the post office to actually post the things.
(that's 1500 minutes, or about 30 more hours). I spend around an hour designing the thing in the first place.
Based on the initial ten I have that's 6 hours of machining and making,
So that 100 will be about 60 hours of machining, plus 30 hours of listing and posting.
So that £400 I've got remaining will need to pay for about 100 hours work. about 2/3rds minimum wage.
in other words.
I started out thinking, cool, the parts for this will make me loads of money, I'll spend about £2.50 on an item that I can sell for £14.
But,
using hobby tools has increased costs due to breakages.
Using hobby tools has meant that I can't work for more than an hour at a time without significant machine downtime to cool off, increasing the amount of time take to produce parts.
Funding this venture myself has meant that I've had to wait until pay day to get more funding. - I could have taken this to a kikstart project, but them I'd have 100 angry customers breathing down my neck saying that my lack of planning or prep wasn't their fault, and where is their money etc.
The long and the short of it is:
before you decide that you want to give up your day job and live the dream of running a tech startup. do your sums first. be realistic.
I was wishfully thinking that I might get around £700 for what would be an easy day stood at a band saw and a drill. -actually I was thinking I could use an ordinary hack saw to do this work!
What I though would be around £100 per hour I'll retired a millionaire next week, has actually resulted in being a drain on time and resources. Maybe with a few thousand pounds of investment for industrial tooling I'd do better -but I doubt that also!
Friday, May 27, 2011
Has it really been so long?
July 2009? WTF it's 2011 now!
have I really not posted in so long? have I really made nothing worthwhile?
I guess so...
as an update where my last post got to.
I was in the middle of making a motorbike trailer in February 2010, a fairly simple truss design, when late one night, as I was welding, I guess somebody noticed the mesmerizing blue lights from the street...
Long story short, the garage was robbed, bikes stolen, MIG welder stolen, Arc welder stolen, angle grinder stolen. and a few other bits and bobs.
that was in February, now I have to admit that the insurance company were really good in some ways, they didn't care where the equipment came from, just what it was and gave very similar replacements, but now over a year later I'm still not back to where I started from.
(so my £10 welder was replaced with a £200 -no, I didn't cheat the insurance company, I got a like for like replacement).
For one, I still don't have my tow hitch that was going to go on the trailer. This one just pisses me off, it's sheer incompetence on the part of the insurer, most of the stuff taken were tools, so they just passed the whole claim to a tool supplier. who don't supply tow hitches. and who didn't bother to pass the claim back.
The next thing to piss me off is the arc welder, now the replacement is perfect, exactly what I had a SIP Weldmate i220p, it's a beast, and a new design. which is where my problems start, it's got screw terminals when I was expecting earth and electrode clamp leads. and they didn't supply either the earth lead or the electrode clamp.
The next in this comedy of errors is the gas bottle for the MIG welder, I had a big bottle. now this tools supplier said that they can't transport the big bottle and would I like a little bottle. I said this. I had a volume of gas, I don't care about the container, it's you've like to send me a crate of little bottles because that's all you can transport, then that's fine. oddly enough they didn't want to spend £250 replacing a bottle size that should have cost £80 so they just didn't...
Now the second to worst bit about this whole experience is the amount of time and research I had to put into this, when I first reported the theft to the insurer I detailed everything. the tools and the model numbers. then the insurer had me look through catalogues, get part numbers and prices. I had to do all the work of finding the tools.
then I had to pay £100 (excess) before I could get the tools replaced.
then the tools were delivered to my door (which was nice), but with only a days notice. good job one of my house mates was in because I couldn't take the day off at such short notice!
as said above the tools were incomplete, when I said this to the insurer, they said that I should go out and buy the replacements myself, then send them the receipts!
but the fact of the matter is, I didn't have the £80 - £100 for a new gas bottle, the time to arrange delivery, or the time to collect.
I didn't have a spare £70 to go and blow on welding leads and clamps.
I didn't have the £30 to get a new cast iron tow hitch to replace the one that was stolen, nor the time or inclination to drive to a supplier (the only one I know of is Towsure, based in Birmingham).
long story short I didn't have £200 that I could just lose for a month or two waiting for the insurer to pay me back. I didn't have the time to sort out sourcing a decent price, collection or delivery of these items.
and I didn't pay my premiums for the half arsed service that I received.
to be honest, I've found the experience a bit of a let down, it's only really now, (15 months later) that I find myself with the enthusiasm to spend spare time actually in the garage doing things.
the real kicker with the welder is that in that time the actuating arm for the clutch in my car broke. and rather than going to a garage and paying the money in labour, I bought a new arc welder from screw fix (Kende) -the biggest in the range. so my the time my incomplete arc welder arrived from the insurance company I'd already replaced it myself!
Still, I can't help but think that a welder with screw terminals would make a better supply for a TIG conversion anyway!
Anyway, I've gotten a bit of a bug for making stuff again, so I hope that there will be some more updates!
have I really not posted in so long? have I really made nothing worthwhile?
I guess so...
as an update where my last post got to.
I was in the middle of making a motorbike trailer in February 2010, a fairly simple truss design, when late one night, as I was welding, I guess somebody noticed the mesmerizing blue lights from the street...
Long story short, the garage was robbed, bikes stolen, MIG welder stolen, Arc welder stolen, angle grinder stolen. and a few other bits and bobs.
that was in February, now I have to admit that the insurance company were really good in some ways, they didn't care where the equipment came from, just what it was and gave very similar replacements, but now over a year later I'm still not back to where I started from.
(so my £10 welder was replaced with a £200 -no, I didn't cheat the insurance company, I got a like for like replacement).
For one, I still don't have my tow hitch that was going to go on the trailer. This one just pisses me off, it's sheer incompetence on the part of the insurer, most of the stuff taken were tools, so they just passed the whole claim to a tool supplier. who don't supply tow hitches. and who didn't bother to pass the claim back.
The next thing to piss me off is the arc welder, now the replacement is perfect, exactly what I had a SIP Weldmate i220p, it's a beast, and a new design. which is where my problems start, it's got screw terminals when I was expecting earth and electrode clamp leads. and they didn't supply either the earth lead or the electrode clamp.
The next in this comedy of errors is the gas bottle for the MIG welder, I had a big bottle. now this tools supplier said that they can't transport the big bottle and would I like a little bottle. I said this. I had a volume of gas, I don't care about the container, it's you've like to send me a crate of little bottles because that's all you can transport, then that's fine. oddly enough they didn't want to spend £250 replacing a bottle size that should have cost £80 so they just didn't...
Now the second to worst bit about this whole experience is the amount of time and research I had to put into this, when I first reported the theft to the insurer I detailed everything. the tools and the model numbers. then the insurer had me look through catalogues, get part numbers and prices. I had to do all the work of finding the tools.
then I had to pay £100 (excess) before I could get the tools replaced.
then the tools were delivered to my door (which was nice), but with only a days notice. good job one of my house mates was in because I couldn't take the day off at such short notice!
as said above the tools were incomplete, when I said this to the insurer, they said that I should go out and buy the replacements myself, then send them the receipts!
but the fact of the matter is, I didn't have the £80 - £100 for a new gas bottle, the time to arrange delivery, or the time to collect.
I didn't have a spare £70 to go and blow on welding leads and clamps.
I didn't have the £30 to get a new cast iron tow hitch to replace the one that was stolen, nor the time or inclination to drive to a supplier (the only one I know of is Towsure, based in Birmingham).
long story short I didn't have £200 that I could just lose for a month or two waiting for the insurer to pay me back. I didn't have the time to sort out sourcing a decent price, collection or delivery of these items.
and I didn't pay my premiums for the half arsed service that I received.
to be honest, I've found the experience a bit of a let down, it's only really now, (15 months later) that I find myself with the enthusiasm to spend spare time actually in the garage doing things.
the real kicker with the welder is that in that time the actuating arm for the clutch in my car broke. and rather than going to a garage and paying the money in labour, I bought a new arc welder from screw fix (Kende) -the biggest in the range. so my the time my incomplete arc welder arrived from the insurance company I'd already replaced it myself!
Still, I can't help but think that a welder with screw terminals would make a better supply for a TIG conversion anyway!
Anyway, I've gotten a bit of a bug for making stuff again, so I hope that there will be some more updates!
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