Laser cutter update + bonus crab robot

I just got off the phone with Louie over at ECULLINE who sent me a “pre-alert”, whatever that means. Apparently the PRAGUE EXPRESS arriving from Quingdao on friday takes *three days* to unload. My machine will be in a bonded warehouse somewhere in vancouver until I clear customs by brokering everything myself. Apparently there’s no way to file the customs paperwork before it arrives, like UPS can do. In fact, I’m told if I show up early to try and expedite things they will fine me. For what? Being in a hurry? I don’t know. Best case scenario is that I can get my stuff “unlocked” by Tuesday and set up in my shop by Friday.

Here’s the irony: now that I’ve paid for the laser cutter and made room for the laser cutter I’ve got access to the machine I was *originally using* …again. I ain’t even mad. This morning I shipped more kits in one day than I ever have before. They greeted me with open arms at the post office and affectionate cries of “Hello, stranger!” Felt good, man. Felt good.

SO: in theory I now have a backup machine and a primary machine so I can cut parts and test new designs really fast. I’ve also got two 3D printers and a number of friends with them so all my manufacturing problems should – again, in theory – be behind me. As long as I don’t screw those up I can consider that challenge solved and I’m on to the next level: making sure the parts I don’t make are in stock the moment I need them.

BEGIN RANT

Long time readers will know how much fun this is: my web store does not understand that a kit is a collection of parts. When I sell a kit I have to manually adjust all my inventory. I I could accurately track how fast inventory was selling then I could write a program to order material on time for me. If my store understood that kits are made of parts then it would only offer as many kits as I can make. What’s that, we sold our last part X? Every affected kit would instantly display a lead time equal to the delivery time for part X.

END RANT

Spending the minimum possible time in supplying parts means I can spend more time meeting customers, providing support, and developing my next robots.

Ok, that was pretty dry. Time for something completely different.

This is my first robot, a crab that walks. It is still the most popular youtube video I’ve ever made by a couple orders of magnitude. I made the robot start to finish in 6 weeks.

The only unique feature when it came out was that it was the only open source robot of it’s kind. That meant you could tinker with the brain and make it do different things without having to re-teach it how to walk.