The US is a great place where I have worked and lived in the US for a while now. I is one of the most important economic centers of the world.
Having said that, I want to say, the US is great because of the Americans that are humble to accept where the wrong things are and have the courage to fixed them for good. The US strength is that is is a place of great opportunities.
By practicing humility and self-discipline the blessings of being a “great” country will be even more apparent.
I invite you to learn more about the US, so next time you visit Hong Kong and mainland China, you can bring a more truthful understanding of the world we live in. Not the single-minded tone that the above quoted comment has.
BTW, I wish you could understand me better, I do not pretend to have any money whatsoever, I am not rich and I wish I can save more money. Having said that, my income is many times the US average.
So no need for you to buy me a ticket, I can pay for that myself… And yes, I am considering move out of the US sometime next year after I can save a little more… I think my favorite countries are China and Brazil… (and Peru)
America ranks 13th in starting a business, according to the Doing Business rankings compiled by The World Bank.
The U.S. ranks 47th in press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders. So much for freedom of the press.
The U.S. ranks 20th in international trade, according to the Doing Business rankings compiled by The World Bank.
The U.S., which ranks 15th in dealing with debt insolvency according to the Doing Business rankings.
The U.S. is ranked 10th in economic freedom, according to The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal.
The U.S. is 25th among 43 developing countries for the best place to be a mother, according to Save The Children.
The U.S. is only the 11th happiest country in the world, according Columbia University’s Earth Institute.
There are 21 countries better than America in freedom from corruption, according to Heritage.org.
The U.S. was ranked 24th in perceived honesty, according to Transparency.org.
America is ranked 39th in income inequality according to the CIA World Factbook.
Looks like a great solution. I think Maslow could benefit from using this company.
I also want to point out that from an engineering point of view, Maslow has a high part count… massive BOM
In modern manufacturing you want to keep the part count low. I do not have enough experience on the Maslow to start recommending design changes. I hope I can get some more free time to start participating more on the engineering discussions… maybe later this year… something to reduce the number of screws and to have maybe like 3 standard type of screws…
I’m still in favor of just leaving out 90% of the frame related screws, if you go get lumber, you can pick up some screws. Everyone builds another frame, so the screws are mostly tossed out i assume.
I have the impression that most people use close to the same sled configuration, so those screws make sense to include.
Yeah, I’ve spent quite a bit of time there between my decade of work with the US Antarctic Program and spending my off season travelling around enjoying the country (mostly south island) and climbing trips. Every country has their issues, including ours. NZ is not a panacea, but I love the way that you can go from a beach to high country, to mountains, to rain forest, to rocky coast all in one day. And having been trained as a geologist, earthquakes are pretty interesting (though the devastation is awful, it is impressive and inspiring to see the resilience of people as they rebuild in the aftermath)
From the email u sent stating that a refund would be best it came from the co founder email. I ordered all the pieces seperately but i seen the kit i got the difference to purchase the kit just need the refund so i can purchase the whole kit.
I wilk send the email which states a refund woukd be best…
21st May! They have been at the Maker Fair. It’s like a 2 man/woman show and not a corporation with an accounting department. I’ve seen no one so generous as easy to deal with in my life. Just give them a few days.
Ah, ok. Yeah, I’m just a guy who got a Maslow in the 2nd batch, so I suspect I was not the intended recipient of your reply, and I can’t process a refund for you. But based on the email you posted, it looks like Hannah was waiting to hear back from you to confirm that a refund is the way you wanted to go.
I sent that email and havent heard from them and havent got the refund…i dont know how else tp get ahold of them…if u have a way to get ahold of them. Could you plz
Just In Time (JIT) isn’t just a Caterpillar thing. It’s is a factory management system originating in Japanese companies which, as far as I know, has revolutionized businesses worldwide at this point. It might have even influenced programming languages – I think JIT compilers are named after it, and maybe inspired by it.
I think we can do a better job of meeting the communities needs and have better work/life balance.
First of all, thanks for all you’ve done on this project. It’s already an amazing thing
Second, you seem really down in this video. Really sorry to see that, after you’ve helped lift us all up with new capabilities, and (at least in my case) my first real entry into the world of CNC.
Third, I have a few suggestions, some of which will just be adding my own vote to what’s already been suggested:
Definitely take a break: rest, relax, regroup, and (if you want to) come back to the project.
I agree with others regarding the JIT approach: ordering stuff only when required, as far as possible. Though you do have some custom parts that probably need to be ordered in batches, maybe even focusing on those and pointing people to amazon / other places for the rest would help reduce your workload?
Maybe a third-party shipment management company could help with the deliveries/customs issues and so on? For example, amazon do a thing where you ship stuff to them on your schedule, then they keep it “in stock” and ship to the customer as requested. Amazon would probably screw with your profit margins far too much, but other companies probably do a similar service.
Maybe there’s a small-run (CNC-based?) custom part manufacturing company that will ship directly to the customer for you?
Do you need to work on ground control, and custom firmware, and stuff like that? Especially now that the new circular mount is normalising coordinate calculation (if I understand the whole original design to linkage to circular mount transition correctly), can’t Maslow just use a standard off the shelf CNC controller, and rely on existing open source CNC solutions (freecad’s path workbench, etc) for control?
MAYBE you’re rethinking Maslow more deeply, and thinking about a new machine of some sort. If so, we’ll all be really interested to see what you come up with. If it’s in any way similar to Maslow, AND improved, most of us will probably be customers of that / both, so don’t worry about changing things up
You’re clearly trying to build a community, and encourage people to share designs, and I’m worried you might be feeling a bit frustrated in this regard. Personally speaking, if I were in your shoes (admittedly, knowing a lot less of the situation than you do) and wanted to refocus, I’d try to offload as much as possible (as described above) and then focus on the community garden: giving it a bit more polish, adding features (multiple images, for front/side/iso, etc.? picture slideshows? 3d previews? Builds people have done, with pictures? List of people willing to build things for others? Maybe even a direct “order this flatpacked from one of our builders” (shorter, but you get the idea) button?), making it integrate with social networking sites like facebook and reddit, and thingiverse and youtube, etc., so you get traffic from those sites as well as just improving the user experience for people using the garden. I think THAT, especially, would be worth adding an extra fee to each maslow for – to hire someone to build a great design sharing tool, that would in turn build the utility of Maslow more, and help to build the community more, thereby driving more sales, and eventually lowering cost more whilst allowing you to increase efficiency and hand off more work to employees.
Just some thoughts @bar & @hannah. I’m sure you guys have your own, probably better ideas on it all
JIT is in essence a question of who keeps the part inventories, the manufacturer or its suppliers. For large companies, it can be great. They can write a ‘neutral’ contract that specifies delivery on demand with enormous penalties.
Tiny enterprises can’t. They don’t have the power. JIT just is not relevant to Bar and Hannah’s situation,
as to 5) GC is tg=he program that takes g-code and translates that to which motor(s) to spin, in which direction, and how much. While we can and do use g-code generated by freecad’s path tool, there has to be another layer that actuslly positions the sled!
I agree with others regarding the JIT approach: ordering stuff only when
required, as far as possible. Though you do have some custom parts that
probably need to be ordered in batches, maybe even focusing on those and
pointing people to amazon / other places for the rest would help reduce your
workload?
They are only ordering parts when needed, but all the ‘interesting’ parts are
large batch orders.
you also are missing the point that ordering say circuit boards 5 at a time and
motors 1000 at a time means you haveto put in 200 orders for the boards before
you run out of your motors. It takes a lot of time to put in 200 orders. Even
though it soaks up some of your capitol, you probably want to spend a lot less
time making orders, dealing with customs, etc and just order the boards in large
quantities.
Maybe a third-party shipment management company could help with the
deliveries/customs issues and so on? For example, amazon do a thing were you
ship stuff to them on your schedule, then they keep it “in stock” and ship to
the customer as requested. Amazon would probably screw with your profit
margins far too much, but other companies probably do a similar service.
they want the kits packed so they just warehouse them and ship the boxes as
needed. Packing the kits is what takes the most time. Shipping them is
relativly easy.
Maybe there’s a small-run (CNC-based?) custom part manufacturing company
that will ship directly to the customer for you?
This is part of what they are evaluating during the break.
Do you need to work on ground control, and custom firmware, and stuff like
that? Especially now that the new circular mount is normalising coordinate
calculation (if I understand the whole original design to linkage to circular
mount transition correctly), can’t Maslow just use a standard off the shelf
CNC controller, and rely on existing open source CNC solutions (freecad’s path
workbench, etc) for control?
the firmware still needs to be custom. The ring makes the math simpler, but does
not convert it to something that other CNC firmware would understand)
Ground Control is still needed for calibration, but if we were to implement some
calibration commands in the firmware, Ground Control could be replaced by other
software (it can be replaced now, except for calibration)
We have talked about wanting to fork grbl to handle the maslow (with the hope of
merging back into the man grbl tree), which would avoid having to maintain
separate firmware.
actually, it’s the firmware that converts the g-code to what motor to spin.
Ground Control is just reading the file and sending it to the machine (except
for calibration and the simulator). It doesn’t know how long the chains are, or
what direction the motors spin.
What refund?
