Bad News, and Good News!

Hello again,

My updates have been very sporadic but thanks to my insomnia I find myself up very early on a morning thinking about things. In in my stupor it seems a stream of random thought would be a good idea.

So news from the Makerspace. I picked up that second resin 3d printer of larger size with the intent of printing molds for the plastic machine. It was a disaster from the start and 10 months later it has yet to create a single good print.

After doing some searching I am still trying to get this to work. I have concluded it was a defective return sold to me. So once again nothing is a simple as it should be and requires a degree in electrical engineering. After wasting about a year with this pile of junk I shelved it and purchased a new Epax machine. It works fine.

I helped a friend pick up this little bit of equipment.

He has it in his shop and if I ever want to spin cast or vulcanize something I am sure we can sort it out. The vulcanizer is very heavy.

The die assemblies are mostly done for regular molds and for car molds. The adjustable sliding side die for cars seems to work fine. I just need to get the 3D printing issue sorted out and can make some strides in that direction.

Time should become a bit more plentiful because my family time commitments are lessening. I have been babysitting an infant for 18 months with an average of 45 hours per week. There were breaks during covid lock downs but it has taken a bite out of progress.

There was an old 40K adage that says- “Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.” I had been hoping for some time that the shipping subsidies for Chinese based sellers would end. It was supposed to end on July 1st and the United States would be able to “self declare” rates. Well that date came and went without any positive changes. In fact the entire world is getting taken advantage of by Chinese sellers. Primarily this is because they are still claiming status as a developing nation. This gives them subsidized shipping and lesser customs duties on exports.

Instead of things improving they got much worse. The United States can set rates, bit other countries wasted no time in hiking rates immensely on US exports. Shipping outgoing packages was ludicrous and now has gotten much worse. A small package to Australia cost $70. This means international sales went from almost none to none. I have disabled any shipping on the web store. If someone really wants to they can contact me directly.

Amazon owns E-commerce, and China runs Amazon. Until the world grows some balls and tells them to stop stealing from the “developing nation” charity fund this is going to keep getting worse.

Costs and fees also are going up on retail sales in addition to shipping. Look at this ebay fee screen shot and it makes it quite clear.

Ebay and Amazon are both squeezing as hard as possible for fees. The more you pay the more you get to be seen. Amazon is also pushing for my items to be tested by a lab for safety and get them certified. I have appealed this and some appeals are granted and some rejected. I simply remove listings that fail to be approved. There is no explanation how some items are OK and other almost identical items are not.

Amazon is also requiring me to get my brand registered with the trademark office. This is costly and could take a long time. Not sure how a company names after a generic replacement can get a trademark on that. We will see.

In addition we have a strange conspiracy going on. Algorithms are finding out our political preferences and punishing us or rewarding us according to how undesirable we may be to those in charge. Check out this graph which shows how things have been going since I got on the “list”. The bottom of the graph is “0”. This is last year during the election.

Ok, so that is something to think about. Maybe I am crazy and it could be a coincidence.

Enough with the bad news. Now the good news.

Because bad things can have good results. Just as my recent flooding in the basement resulted in my new and improved office. And the termite attack in the slot car room will result in a massively improved track. The increased resistance in retail sales opens up new avenues.

I made 8 molds over the past couple of months for other folks and that worked out very nicely. If we are getting massacred on the retail side of things we can still play around on the edges of things. Some wholesale folks are still hanging in there and an occasional new opportunity comes along. Had a call from someone asking for 32,000 plastic keys. Might go nowhere, or might be a decent little project.

In addition to the Epax 3d printer, there are some other things to play around with in the makerspace.

First, a white toner laser printer. This will allow me to print my own decals using white ink. This was a very costly investment and pretty sure it will never pay for itself. But it will make things better.

On my desk is a new Windows 10 CAD powerhouse computer, with the newest version of Rhino installed. Major improvement.

The tooling fixtures are done for the EDM holders. There is now a standardized method of making car parts which should make things more structured.

The base for the cast molds has a drill bit broken off about 3″ deep. Getting it out is going to require some real creativity and a lot of solid blows from a hammer.

I have finally found insurance to cover my shop. Maybe I can finally hold meet-ups for makers as I always have wanted to do. First I need to put the ceiling back up the the bathroom……………..

I am painting minis again. Which is fantastic and a return to something I just love doing. It seems my real love in life is trying to be creative. i want to encourage everyone to do this, and not be shamed in to thinking you can not be good enough. Many of us are really not very good at stuff but even if the end result is not up the the standards of the social media-just do it anyway. Painting or making a video is rewarding. Ignore the critics and just keep doing what you do.

This blog has taken a back seat to Facebook and Youtube for updates. I apologize for that, but according to analytics this gets very little exposure compared to those other platforms.

Writing is still a lot of fun. I do have to admit making videos is a joy as well. I got a lot planned for that. It was never my intention to monetize my videos but it seems Youtube has placed ads in them anyhow.

So that is where we are on this beautiful spring day. I am off to the post office and then in the shop. We are running test shots on the sliding die assembly.

Have a good spring everyone and never stop doing what you love. Even if it is futile.