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A Vending Machine full of electronic parts & kits

VHS used to be one block from a grocery store. Getting food and drink downtown is so easy it wasn’t even an afterthought. Between my parking space and the hacking space there were two bars, two grocery stores, a macdonald’s, and a pizza parlor.

New VHS is a little more remote. Great big size, much cleaner environment… no food or drink. On foot it would take at least two minutes to walk to the nearest food source, a Macdonald’s. Apparently the burger joint next to them is even worse than Micky D’s, so that’s out. In the other direction is the Foundation – great if you want to wait 30 minutes for a table.

If you know anything about me by now, you know I see an opportunity and I take it. That’s why I’m looking to get a snack machine. Being that it’s at the VHS, I don’t see why it should *just* be food and drink. What about RPis? What about Arduinos? What about TV-B-Gones? Sadly, I don’t think lock picking kits will be included.

Now I’m not totally selfish, I plan to give 50% of profits back to the club. The rest is for restocking, insurance, and my time. If the machine pays itself off then maybe even more can go to the club. I plan to get a dirt cheap model and hack at it to add my own touch screen and maybe have it email me when it is running low.

What you’d want to see in a hackspace vending machine? Comment below.

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Should every asset have a SKU?

I’ve been working on my Wiki today. I added a long overdue table for shipping. I’ve displayed it here vertically for ease of reading, along with my first entry.

Order #	100
SKU	??
Name	LG900N Laser cutter
Qty	1
Supplier	G Weike
Shipper
Tracking #
Order cost	$**** USD
Import cost
Total cost
Order date	2012-05-25
Arrival date
Delivery time

This way I hope to be able to predict future order times better and avoid “stock outs” or product shortages. I only have one order at the moment, so on a whim I put it into the list. …and then it got me thinking, which is always dangerous. The field for SKU makes me wonder if I should give the laser cutter a SKU. More generally, should *every* asset have a SKU? Here are the pros and cons I see.

Pros

Total asset management: every item in the shop can be tracked, along with it’s depreciation, original cost, cost over time. Items could be easily re-ordered or sold (example: 3D printers). They could be marked for anti-theft purposes and given a QR code for easy how-to lookup, simplifying future employee training. Adding each item would only have to be done once.

Cons

It’s resource consuming to file every item and resources (especially time) are very precious. Some items are labelled individually, some are labelled by type – does this cause a filing headache? How can filing info become invalid or out of date?

I don’t know a lot of highly organized and/or highly effective people – they’re off getting stuff done, I suppose. I’d love to compare notes. Have you got any thoughts, pro or con, to share?

As I look at this I realize the table is a bit misleading – a single order might have multiple items of different type, each with it’s own SKU, in a many-to-one relationship. Dividing up the import costs could be trouble!

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Laser cutter purchased!

We’ve been having a real challenge with producing laser cut parts over the last 6 weeks, ever since the VHS laser cutter was disassembled for transport to the new location at 270 east 1st ave. I did everything I could to facilitate the move, including rent a truck for the largest items.

In the mean time I’ve found and fixed a number of reasons why my 3D prints were going bad. The latest appears to be tension on the filament – the spool of plastic doesn’t unwind fast enough and it pulls on the moving parts in a bad way sometimes.

I’ve also been experimenting with new designs to improve older models and getting ready for the Vancouver Mini Maker Faire 2013. I need to get some fishing line, stat!

This machine from G Weike will have 900x600mm cutting area, z axis control, red light for setup, honeycomb bed, chiller, backup tube, and all the rest of the fixins. Once this is installed I’ll be able to produce parts on demand and prototype much much faster and reduce delivery time for all my clients. I also foresee laser cutting as a service for some special customers.

Things are getting more awesome all the time here. It’s great to be my own boss – I get all the best toys.

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CBC interview, Friday May 31st

I’ve got an interview with CBC radio Vancouver coming up on the 31st, just in time for the Mini Maker Faire.  I and several other makers will be at the VHS friday at 10:00 for a special sneak preview of our Maker Faire awesomeness.  If you’re a local maker that’s going to be at the faire, this is a twofold opportunity: one, you stand a good chance of being on the radio to promote your stuff; and two, you get to test your setup a day ahead to make sure there are no hiccups in transportation.

See you there!

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Testing the post sharing system

Apparently the post sharing system is broken, all twitter links are showing up as garbage.  Expect a few of these in the near future.