As promised, here's what I learned from my entrepreneurship class last quarter:
First off, Sindrian Arts, at least my current vision of it, is what is know as a 'lifestyle' startup, as opposed to a 'foundation' or 'gazelle' startup. A foundation startup is like an inventor's project, but on a larger scale: the entire business is centered around the research and development of a new idea which is then sold to another firm to utilize. My class did not spend much time on these, focusing more on gazelle startups. Gazelles are more like what most people think of when they think of startups: it's designed to grow as much as possible as quickly as possible so that it can be sold for a huge profit a few years down the line. These are the types of business venture capitalists like to invest in. Lifestyle startups, on the other hand, could be seen as the gazelle's little cousin. They tend to be much less ambitious, focusing more on creating a stable small business then a national firm with explosive growth. As I mentioned before, the current version of the Sindiran Arts business plan has two distinct phases, and the first phase falls into the lifestyle category.
See, the mission of Sindrian Arts is to help create a new manufacturing paradigm based upon (among other things) decentralization. I want to help create a community of small, local businesses that collectively compete with big-box stores. The first phase of this is to create a model for success, so I need to create a living laboratory for my ideas. Since the end goal is to help create lots of small business, this laboratory will be a small business itself. Once I've refined and proven my ideas, I can then move on to the second phase of the business where I become an evangelical consultant to help others create the same kind of business.
Now, this is what I learned: most people are not interested in investing in lifestyle startups. This is one of the reasons I didn't write the Sindrian Arts business plan for the class: the class was geared towards writing business plans that would be attractive to investors. This also tells me that when I start looking for seed money, VCs are NOT where I should look. In looking at alternate sources of funding I came across Kickstarter. Through Kickstarter, I could raise the right amount of money with very few strings attached. Not only that, but there have been other CNC-based projects on there that have been very successful. Sounds like a good match!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
And now we get down to business
Apologies for not having posted in a while; unsurprisingly, school kept me busy. However, not a whole lot of consequence happened, so here's the cliff notes for the interesting bits:
Classes I took:
Design communication:
Same as every quarter; sketch a lot, do some renders. One highlight is that I was introduced to Prezi, a wonderful little presentation web app that allows anyone to make a visually interesting presentation fairly easily.
JCPenny bag studio:
This was my design studio for the quarter. Our task was to re-design JCPenny's (or maybe it should be jcp's) approach to reusable bags to help them transition away from plastic bags. Unfortunately it was a group project, and the groups kept changing. However, the execs from jcp LOVED the final presentation, so it all worked out in the end.
Design Seminar:
The purpose of this class was to prepare a proposal for our capstone project, start on research for it, and get it approved by the faculty. Given that I already had a pretty well fleshed-out vision of my capstone (the CNC-based business I just spent a quarter working on), this was pretty easy.
Career Development:
AKA, how to get a job after you graduate. Since I plan on being self-employed, I had to work with the professor to adapt the assignments to suit my needs, but it worked out all right. For the most part, I simply adapted work from my final class:
Entrepreneurship:
This was my big class of the quarter. Ironically, it was also my only elective, and the only class I took outside of the design college. I cannot rant and rave enough about this class; it was hands down the best thing I took at UC to date. If you go to UC and are at all interested in entrepreneurship, I HIGHLY recommend you take this class (or any class, really) taught by Tom Dalziel. If you're not in the college of business you'll have to get special permission, but Tom will be very happy to have you.
This was the first class I've ever taken with NO BUSY WORK. Every single assignment was part of the larger process of developing a business plan to be presented at the end of the quarter.
I had originally planned to write the Sindrian Arts business plan for this class, but as did more research, I realized that a: the business I wanted to start would not be attractive to outside investors interested primarily in making money, and b: my business actually had two distinct phases, each requiring their own plan, and thus too much work for the class. What I ended up doing was writing a business plan for a version of Sindrian Arts.
In this business, called Green Furniture Works, the focus would be on making sustainable designer furniture. While not quite what I want to do, it was close enough that I could still lean a lot from it, while being much more applicable to the class. My next post will be about how this all has informed where I'm going from here.
Classes I took:
Design communication:
Same as every quarter; sketch a lot, do some renders. One highlight is that I was introduced to Prezi, a wonderful little presentation web app that allows anyone to make a visually interesting presentation fairly easily.
JCPenny bag studio:
This was my design studio for the quarter. Our task was to re-design JCPenny's (or maybe it should be jcp's) approach to reusable bags to help them transition away from plastic bags. Unfortunately it was a group project, and the groups kept changing. However, the execs from jcp LOVED the final presentation, so it all worked out in the end.
Design Seminar:
The purpose of this class was to prepare a proposal for our capstone project, start on research for it, and get it approved by the faculty. Given that I already had a pretty well fleshed-out vision of my capstone (the CNC-based business I just spent a quarter working on), this was pretty easy.
Career Development:
AKA, how to get a job after you graduate. Since I plan on being self-employed, I had to work with the professor to adapt the assignments to suit my needs, but it worked out all right. For the most part, I simply adapted work from my final class:
Entrepreneurship:
This was my big class of the quarter. Ironically, it was also my only elective, and the only class I took outside of the design college. I cannot rant and rave enough about this class; it was hands down the best thing I took at UC to date. If you go to UC and are at all interested in entrepreneurship, I HIGHLY recommend you take this class (or any class, really) taught by Tom Dalziel. If you're not in the college of business you'll have to get special permission, but Tom will be very happy to have you.
This was the first class I've ever taken with NO BUSY WORK. Every single assignment was part of the larger process of developing a business plan to be presented at the end of the quarter.
I had originally planned to write the Sindrian Arts business plan for this class, but as did more research, I realized that a: the business I wanted to start would not be attractive to outside investors interested primarily in making money, and b: my business actually had two distinct phases, each requiring their own plan, and thus too much work for the class. What I ended up doing was writing a business plan for a version of Sindrian Arts.
In this business, called Green Furniture Works, the focus would be on making sustainable designer furniture. While not quite what I want to do, it was close enough that I could still lean a lot from it, while being much more applicable to the class. My next post will be about how this all has informed where I'm going from here.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Catch-up, part the first
Apologies for lapse in posts, but between wrapping things up in Boston, moving back to Cincinnati, starting classes back at DAAP, and being really sick twice, I've forgotten to make time to post here. However, I've recently decided to get my act together, and part of that is going to be posting here at least once a week.
Here's what's happened since my last post:
That standing computer desk I was working on turned out beautifully:
Leaving out a bit of trouble-shooting, it only took 45 minutes to mill all the parts, and that's with multiple passes. With a more ridged machine, I could easily half that. Design-wise, it was a little wobbly, but I think I know a neat way to fix that with a few eye bolts and some rope or cable. Also, I discovered that it should probably be a bit shorter, since one girl I showed it to said she had a hard time seeing the screen.
After that, I made a few modifications to the Blackfoot pattern to integrate the additional bearing holders for the X axis drive shafts and to eliminate the parts I wouldn't need before making the g-code for cutting it. By the time I was actually ready to run the code I was running short on time, so I ran it a little faster that I probably should have. The pieces came out with a few defects here and there, but nothing that would prevent them from fitting together correctly. The next day I packed up all my stuff, and left the morning after that. Thus ended my wonderful travel quarter. I was sad that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to a lot of the folks at the Asylum, but I'll be back.
Ok, I've got to go grab some lunch. I'll post the rest either later today, or in a day or two.
Here's what's happened since my last post:
That standing computer desk I was working on turned out beautifully:
Leaving out a bit of trouble-shooting, it only took 45 minutes to mill all the parts, and that's with multiple passes. With a more ridged machine, I could easily half that. Design-wise, it was a little wobbly, but I think I know a neat way to fix that with a few eye bolts and some rope or cable. Also, I discovered that it should probably be a bit shorter, since one girl I showed it to said she had a hard time seeing the screen.
After that, I made a few modifications to the Blackfoot pattern to integrate the additional bearing holders for the X axis drive shafts and to eliminate the parts I wouldn't need before making the g-code for cutting it. By the time I was actually ready to run the code I was running short on time, so I ran it a little faster that I probably should have. The pieces came out with a few defects here and there, but nothing that would prevent them from fitting together correctly. The next day I packed up all my stuff, and left the morning after that. Thus ended my wonderful travel quarter. I was sad that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to a lot of the folks at the Asylum, but I'll be back.
Ok, I've got to go grab some lunch. I'll post the rest either later today, or in a day or two.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
That's just silly.
Yesterday was a comedy of errors. The day started well enough with some test cuts of small pieces to test slot clearances, and all went well. Then I decided to mill out something big: the standing computer desk:
Now, while for the most part it fits together without hardware, the adjustable keyboard rack does require the drilling of the holes. After figuring out how to get poor 'ol CamBam (free version) to drill holes (and testing this), I started the program.
It started out ok, but then by the third hole it started generating a good deal of smoke. It took lots of experimenting with feed rates, pecking, and other such stuff to figure out what was going on: I was trying to drill holes with a downcut bit.
For the non-machinists out there, allow me to explain: your standard drill bit is what's called an upcut bit, that is the spiral flutes of the bit will bring chips up to the top of the bit. This is good for high-speed cutting, where you have to worry about keeping the bit clear. However, the drawback to using upcut bits in a CNC router is that it will cause the face of your material to chip and break near the cut, especially if you're working on a laminate material like plywood. For this reason I bought downcut bits, where the flutes of the bit spiral the other way. This eliminates chipping on the face, but has other drawbacks, such as not being good at drilling holes. What was happening to me is that the MDF dust created by the bit was being kept down in the hole where it was compressed and rubbed against itself a high speed, causing it to burn. To fix this, I changed the program so that I'd only drill shallow holes, the plan being to take the pieces over to the drill press and finish them after they were cut out.
Just before I was going to start cutting the actual pieces out, suddenly everything shut off. Turns out someone in the wood shop next to me blew a fuse. To avoid this in the future I used an extension cord to plug into a different outlet. I thought nothing of this at the time, but it would haunt me the rest of the night. After that I could not get the machine to do what I wanted. It wouldn't always move when it was told, and nothing I did or changed seemed to help. At 11pm I decided to call it a night and went home.
I came in this morning and after implementing a clamping system I thought up to keep the workpiece from moving (we thought that perhaps this was causing some of the error), I got back to work.
As one would imagine, the same problem was still there, but this time I noticed that it seemed to be limited to the Y and Z motors. I checked the connections, moved cords around to avoid possible interference (even though they were shielded), but no dice. The most annoying thing was that it would work fine until I actually went to run a program. A stroke of luck finally showed me what was going on: I turned the router on and had the program start and then when I saw it was moving I turned on the shop vac. I look back to see that the Y motor had stopped moving right when I had hit the vac's switch. Remember when I changed outlets? Turns out the new one didn't supply the same amount of current as the old one, so the motors weren't getting enough juice when the router and vac were on as well.
They're now on a different circuit. Off to cutting!
Now, while for the most part it fits together without hardware, the adjustable keyboard rack does require the drilling of the holes. After figuring out how to get poor 'ol CamBam (free version) to drill holes (and testing this), I started the program.
It started out ok, but then by the third hole it started generating a good deal of smoke. It took lots of experimenting with feed rates, pecking, and other such stuff to figure out what was going on: I was trying to drill holes with a downcut bit.
For the non-machinists out there, allow me to explain: your standard drill bit is what's called an upcut bit, that is the spiral flutes of the bit will bring chips up to the top of the bit. This is good for high-speed cutting, where you have to worry about keeping the bit clear. However, the drawback to using upcut bits in a CNC router is that it will cause the face of your material to chip and break near the cut, especially if you're working on a laminate material like plywood. For this reason I bought downcut bits, where the flutes of the bit spiral the other way. This eliminates chipping on the face, but has other drawbacks, such as not being good at drilling holes. What was happening to me is that the MDF dust created by the bit was being kept down in the hole where it was compressed and rubbed against itself a high speed, causing it to burn. To fix this, I changed the program so that I'd only drill shallow holes, the plan being to take the pieces over to the drill press and finish them after they were cut out.
Just before I was going to start cutting the actual pieces out, suddenly everything shut off. Turns out someone in the wood shop next to me blew a fuse. To avoid this in the future I used an extension cord to plug into a different outlet. I thought nothing of this at the time, but it would haunt me the rest of the night. After that I could not get the machine to do what I wanted. It wouldn't always move when it was told, and nothing I did or changed seemed to help. At 11pm I decided to call it a night and went home.
I came in this morning and after implementing a clamping system I thought up to keep the workpiece from moving (we thought that perhaps this was causing some of the error), I got back to work.
As one would imagine, the same problem was still there, but this time I noticed that it seemed to be limited to the Y and Z motors. I checked the connections, moved cords around to avoid possible interference (even though they were shielded), but no dice. The most annoying thing was that it would work fine until I actually went to run a program. A stroke of luck finally showed me what was going on: I turned the router on and had the program start and then when I saw it was moving I turned on the shop vac. I look back to see that the Y motor had stopped moving right when I had hit the vac's switch. Remember when I changed outlets? Turns out the new one didn't supply the same amount of current as the old one, so the motors weren't getting enough juice when the router and vac were on as well.
They're now on a different circuit. Off to cutting!
Saturday, December 11, 2010
It was a good day
It would seem that after some teasing, Murphy decided to give me a break yesterday.
First, the motors arrived right when UPS said they would. Installing one on the x axis went smoothly, but I ran into some problems once I started testing and tuning it. First, when I tried to run it it kept stopping at the same place on the table and clutching out. Turns out the set screw that was keeping one of the drive sprockets in place had loosened somewhat and was catching on the chain. For some reason it now wanted to be tighter than it had been before, which meant grinding a new flat into it's head to prevent further catching. Once that problem was solved I started the process of finding the right amount of current to drive the motor. Surprisingly, even with the current turned all the way up to 4.3A (the motor should only get 3A), it was still not able to move at the speeds I thought it should. In looking for a cause of this, I had the first of the day's breakthroughs.
It turns out the dip switches are "on" when they are in the down position. This meant two things: that the auto half current function (which helps keep motors from overheating) was off when I thought it was on, and that the boards were set to microstep at 25 subdivisions instead of just 5. While microstepping does give you much more precision (which I don't really need), it also severely reduces the amount of torque (which I do). I turn the auto half current function, set the driver to 2 subdivisions just to be on the safe side, modify the necessary settings in the software to reflect this, and resume testing.
The torque of the motor improves significantly, but it's still not performing as well as I'd expected. I could get it up to about 9 inches per second, but higher than that and it would choke, regardless of current. Now, when I was running my previous jobs, I had the machine running at feed rates of 50 and 100, so I was understandably concerned. I had no idea what was wrong, and was starting to get very frustrated.
Then it hit me: the units are different.
See, those feed rates of 50 and 100 were inches per minute, not second, so what I thought was a slow 9 was in fact 540 IPM, way faster than I'd ever need to go.
It's amazing how one small realization can improves one outlook on life.
After that, it was all cake. I re-tuned all three motors and cut the next prototype of the card dispenser. The y axis motor got a little on the warm side, so I had to let it rest half-way through the job, but I can turn the current down on that one with torque to spare.
There were some issues with the card dispenser job itself, but that was because of how I had it cut, not any hardware problems. I assembled it today, and it works quite well:
You can find other pics of it, along with screenshots of other things I've modeled in Solidworks that are destined to be milled out on a CNC here.
First, the motors arrived right when UPS said they would. Installing one on the x axis went smoothly, but I ran into some problems once I started testing and tuning it. First, when I tried to run it it kept stopping at the same place on the table and clutching out. Turns out the set screw that was keeping one of the drive sprockets in place had loosened somewhat and was catching on the chain. For some reason it now wanted to be tighter than it had been before, which meant grinding a new flat into it's head to prevent further catching. Once that problem was solved I started the process of finding the right amount of current to drive the motor. Surprisingly, even with the current turned all the way up to 4.3A (the motor should only get 3A), it was still not able to move at the speeds I thought it should. In looking for a cause of this, I had the first of the day's breakthroughs.
It turns out the dip switches are "on" when they are in the down position. This meant two things: that the auto half current function (which helps keep motors from overheating) was off when I thought it was on, and that the boards were set to microstep at 25 subdivisions instead of just 5. While microstepping does give you much more precision (which I don't really need), it also severely reduces the amount of torque (which I do). I turn the auto half current function, set the driver to 2 subdivisions just to be on the safe side, modify the necessary settings in the software to reflect this, and resume testing.
The torque of the motor improves significantly, but it's still not performing as well as I'd expected. I could get it up to about 9 inches per second, but higher than that and it would choke, regardless of current. Now, when I was running my previous jobs, I had the machine running at feed rates of 50 and 100, so I was understandably concerned. I had no idea what was wrong, and was starting to get very frustrated.
Then it hit me: the units are different.
See, those feed rates of 50 and 100 were inches per minute, not second, so what I thought was a slow 9 was in fact 540 IPM, way faster than I'd ever need to go.
It's amazing how one small realization can improves one outlook on life.
After that, it was all cake. I re-tuned all three motors and cut the next prototype of the card dispenser. The y axis motor got a little on the warm side, so I had to let it rest half-way through the job, but I can turn the current down on that one with torque to spare.
There were some issues with the card dispenser job itself, but that was because of how I had it cut, not any hardware problems. I assembled it today, and it works quite well:
You can find other pics of it, along with screenshots of other things I've modeled in Solidworks that are destined to be milled out on a CNC here.
Monday, December 6, 2010
More shopping
I had to order two new motors today. One to replace the z axis motor that got too hot the other day, and one to replace the x axis motor that got too hot today. Not sure exactly why, since I thought the current was turned down on that one, but perhaps not. The CNC is again out of commission until the motors arrive, which with any luck should be before the weekend.
*sigh*
Ah well, time to do some more CAD modeling. I'll have plenty to mill once it's up and running again.
*sigh*
Ah well, time to do some more CAD modeling. I'll have plenty to mill once it's up and running again.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
First prototype!
A quick update today:
On Friday I milled out parts for a prototype business card dispenser. Check out the flickr set here.
On Friday I milled out parts for a prototype business card dispenser. Check out the flickr set here.
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