The 300 pound monster has arrived!
about 10 years ago – Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 11:03:25 AM

It's here! But first, a brief recap: 

As I mentioned in previous updates, I had originally been led to believe that the laser was in stock in the company's warehouse. That turned out not to be the case. While I had hoped to get the laser a week or so after ordering, I was told not to expect it until the end of July. This has caused some delays with the development of the website. However, I still believe this is the right laser for the job and worth waiting for (I only wish I had been able to plan accordingly from the beginning because the timing does complicate things). So we are pressing forward.

And now, the end of July is upon us, and the laser is here! After hearing out my complaints about the delivery timeframe, they promised to make sure the laser was shipped out the day after it arrived at their US warehouses. That way it would get here as quickly as possible.

They seem to have followed through on that, and the shipment was sent when they said it would be... but the shipping company got it down here and then realized they didn't have any trucks in the area with a lift gate which delayed the shipment multiple days. I would think that would have been something they thought about before accepting the delivery job... but whatever. Anyway, they did finally get it here by finding a local company to contract with to bring it the last leg of its long journey.

And on Saturday morning (July 19, 2014), this 300 pound monster arrived on our doorstep.

On Sunday afternoon, I was able to round up some help – namely my father and a friend (and local backer), Jeremiah Ward to help wrestle this beast up the stairs to the shop...

With some careful planning, an appliance dolly, some ratchet straps, and a lot of sweat (though as far as I know, no blood and only a few tears) we were able to conquer the beast and bring it to its final resting place on a 2nd floor work table.

Fun multiple choice trivia:

At one point along this journey, Jeremiah asked for something pointy to help him release one of the ratchet straps. Reaching for the first thing I saw fitting that description, I handed him (choose one):

If you chose C (a sai), you're correct!

It's here, but the wait isn't quite over.

I haven't been able to do much testing with it (beyond slicing up a couple of sheets of paper to make sure the thing works – and it does), because it arrived with a different sized exhaust port than I had requested.

That might sound like a minor detail, but the exhaust is mission critical.

Without the exhaust hooked up, the smoke quickly builds up in the main compartment of the laser and can obstruct the beam of the laser as well as dirtying the lenses which are critical to getting a good clear engraving. Not to mention the fact that many of the chemicals produced by burning plastic (and many wood products) are harmful to breath.

I spent several hundred dollars building an exhaust system for this thing that will suck the air out of the chamber and filter the smoke particles as well as toxic chemicals released from burning plastic and certain glues found in wood (among other things). And it was built based on this machine having a certain size of exhaust port.

Luckily, it looks like the exhaust port is interchangeable with an allen wrench. So I'm waiting for the replacement to come so I can switch it out and get the exhaust hooked up to the laser.

I think they may have sent me a different machine than they originally intended when I complained about the late delivery time in an attempt to get it to me quicker and then missed the fact that the exhausts were different. When I called to let them know about the problem, they quickly shipped a replacement part out, but that shipment was then delayed by severe weather (that part is definitely not their fault – they sent it UPS and UPS is generally the most reliable carrier in this area).

What happens once that part gets here?

Well, they are supposed to send someone out and calibrate the machine for me which will ensure everything is functioning at it's peak and giving the best engraving results possible. Based on the schedule of the guy coming to do it, that won't happen for a couple more weeks – but we may be able to do some of it over the phone to get things moving a little sooner.

The problem of timing...

You may remember in my last update that my wife was 8 months pregnant. Well, she's still pregnant, but any day now she might not be.

One of the big reasons I was hoping to get the laser in early June (if not late May), aside from being able to start filling orders sooner, is that it would give me quite a bit of time to do testing and get the website up and running before the baby came and made it harder to focus on testing and development.

Well, now the baby could come at any moment and I don't have the luxury of having my system all in place before that happens like I had hoped.

So it's not simply a delay of nearly 2 months in the arrival of the laser, it's also a delay to a less ideal window of time to do the testing and development. This being our first child, I have no idea how it will truly impact the development process for the website. Who knows, maybe it will speed it up because I want to go to my office to get away from the crying! But I want to be upfront with you in letting you know where I'm at in case it does negatively impact things.

Regardless, I want you to rest assured that things are still on track even if it is not in the timing I had originally planned for.

Communication Issues

We have been having a TON of issues with our internet connectivity over the past several days. Really it's been an intermittent issue for longer than that, but it seems to have been worse in recent days. The internet has been down for most of the week with just little chunks of uptime here and there – and it seems to always go back down as soon as I realize it's up! In fact, it's down as I'm writing this. I'm not sure when I'll be able to post it.

Because of this, I'm looking into options for a backup internet service either through satellite or a cellular carrier. That's not something I had planned to do, but internet access is critical to the success of this business (I can't check or respond to your emails/messages for one thing, and once we're up and running I wouldn't be able to process new orders). And this recent outage is really unacceptable from a business stand point. I don't want to find myself in this position again if it can be avoided.

I don't normally use cellular internet or satellite internet and the words “reliable” or “quality” in the same sentence either, but they should work as a backup plan. If any of you have experience with a certain company that you've found particularly good (or bad), your input would be appreciated (though I know the reception will vary based on location and other factors).

If you've sent me a message/comment/email recently and haven't received a response, I apologize and ask for your patience as I work through this and try to get caught up on correspondence during the uptime that we do have.

Dice Update

Quick update about the dice – the rest of our order of blank dice is on a boat somewhere in the Pacific. Based on how everything has played out so far, they will probably show up the day the baby is born!

Kidding aside, I expect them sometime in the first half of August – exact date will depend on how long the customs office takes to clear them when they hit port in LA.

And finally, some pictures of the machine that will help bring this project into reality...

All this discussion of time frames and delays is me trying to be honest both with you and myself about where we are. I don't want to sound negative or like I'm not excited though. I really am excited to have this machine set up in my shop and am really looking forward to digging in and seeing what we can do with it.

Just so you know I really am excited, here's a couple more pictures (that's what people do when they're excited, right?):

Update 20 – Happy 5th of July!
about 10 years ago – Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 02:18:16 PM

For those of you in the USA, I hope you're having an enjoyable holiday weekend – for everyone else I hope you're simply having a good (non-holiday) weekend!

It's been a couple weeks and is time for another update on the progress around here.

Not much has changed regarding the delays mentioned in the previous update. But there have been a couple of exciting things happen otherwise.

Laser Update:

I've been talking to the laser company trying to find out if there is anything that can be done to get the laser here faster. But no real solution has come up, so for now we're still waiting for the boat to get to the US from Austria. I have however been assured that they will ship the laser to me the next day after it arrives in their US warehouse.

As mentioned in the last update, this is the biggest delay so far. Until the laser gets here, we cannot even begin to do any sort of testing. And there are large chunks of the website that cannot be programmed until that time either. So for now, it's just a big waiting game until they get the laser to my shop and I can get it set up and begin testing.

That said, waiting is certainly not the only thing we're doing around here...

Full-Color Printing Update:

A week ago, my wife and I rented a box truck and went on a 1400 mile (round trip) road trip. She is about 8 months pregnant by the way, so major kudos to her for enduring the whole thing like a champ (also let it be known that she wanted to go – I didn't force it on her).

We had multiple delays along the way...

First the truck we had reserved wasn't there because the previous people decided not to return it for 1 ½ weeks past their reservation. So they had to bring up a truck from a different location that was several hours away (luckily we called ahead to double check, so we weren't sitting there waiting the whole time).

The next day, the truck that they gave us was pretty beat up. It had a giant crack on the windshield, huge dents and scratches on the box, and a broken lift gate. But we were in a bit of a bind having already called around to every location within a couple hundred miles and not finding anything available. And they told us it should run fine.

It didn't take long to notice that anytime we were traveling between 45 and 50 mph the truck started shaking pretty bad. I'm told that may have been a tire imbalance – I don't know enough about trucks to tell you if that's accurate or not. But based on what they were telling me what happened next was a different problem. A few hundred miles down the road, we're going about 65 mph and the truck starts shaking and lurching way worse than before. And it continued to do so for a couple miles as I tried changing speed all the way down to about 40mph (didn't feel safe going slower than that on a fast moving highway without much shoulder). It was shaking bad enough that it was hard to control the truck and things in the cab were flying all over the place. I was afraid we were endangering ourselves as well as others on the road around us. Finally, as I prayed that my wife wouldn't be shaken into labor it stopped.

We were able to continue a couple more miles to the next exit and find a parking lot to stop in. I then spent over 6 hours making phone calls to Ryder's customer support line trying to get things straightened out. Finally they agreed to tow in a replacement truck and tow the lurching one away. By this time it was getting close to midnight so we found a hotel and waited until about 2 am for the new truck to come. From the time of my first call until I went back to the hotel room to get a few hours of sleep, was about 9 hours (not including the hours of driving) – talk about a long day.

The new truck had over twice as many miles on it, but it seemed to be in much better condition overall. No more lurching, and the liftgate worked.

Finally we got to our destination and along with a bunch of supplies and other things (which we'll be excited to tell you about in the future but that will have to wait for now), we picked up a nice printer that is capable of printing full color directly on the dice. We also got quite a bit of ink and other supplies for it. We'll likely need to get a new color profile set up for it before we'll be able to print full color on a dark background (non-white dice), but that should all be possible with this printer. It will also allow us to print on other (potentially much larger) things in the future and we're really excited by the different possibilities this printer brings to the Custom Game Lab (Custom printed acrylic pieces? Custom printed boxes? Chits? Boards? Who knows what we'll come up with to print on).

The printer isn't set up yet, but I'll try to get some pictures for you in a future update.

Between the chaos of the trip and trying to catch up on everything when we got back, we actually just got the truck returned to the rental place yesterday.

I am also a bit behind on emails, so if you're waiting on a response to a KS message or an email I appreciate the patience. I'll try to get caught up on those over the course of the weekend.

For those of you wondering why we didn't just have the printer shipped to us: The printer wasn't the only reason for the trip. The other reasons are business related, and I think you'll be excited to hear them - but it's news for another time. I'll have to leave you hanging for now ;)

20,000 DICE!!!

I mentioned in the last update that I had paid to have the first part of our order of dice expedited. Well, while we were out gallivanting around the country, the first 20,000 dice came. Black and white are the only colors in the shipment and half of them are square and half of them have the more rounded corners.

There's not a whole lot that can be done with them while we're waiting for the laser, but at least they'll be here when it gets here so we can start testing right away.

In the meantime, here's a couple snapshots: