[Arm-netbook] screwed up the Riki200 plotter design

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

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crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68


On Sat, Jul 29, 2017 at 6:38 PM, Neil Jansen <njansen1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ehh... How many months have you been at this design so far?

 although i've pretty massively lost track of time, i think it's been
5 weeks (including parts ordering) which is pretty damn fast for an
entirely new 3D printer.  for comparison, i was forced to spend an
emergency 3 weeks recovering the shit-for-brains taobao clone.

 the level of ignorance that's propagated throughout the 3D printing
world is stupendously high, neil.  and, worse, the fucking idiots who
supply 3D printers over here don't fucking well respect the GPL, and,
even worse than that, are quite likely to ship you a TOTALLY DIFFERENT
SET OF PARTS from the ones you paid money for!

 i can't risk even buying some arbitrary off-the-shelf pile-of-crap
from a china supplier - done it twice already here and it was utterly
pointless.

 this really is the only safe way to do it: take advantage of the low
cost of parts, and do the design right.  it's the only way i'll know
i'll get something that will work, not least because if there *is*
something wrong i don't have to fucking well reverse-engineer 80% of
the fucking parts like i was forced to with this fucking
shit-for-brains taobao clone even before *getting started* with fixing
the damn problem.

 nnnnggggh :)


> printer.  Even after you've made your first one, there are still some
> sizable risks before you go out and build a fleet of them.

 ... which is why i'm happy to take my time doing it.

> Your "existential 3D printing moments" blog post was on May 16, where you
> said that with 10 printers, it would take four months of 8 hours a day
> printing to make these parts.  Assume 16 hours per day, that's two (2)
> months with the same amount of machines.  Or, for 24 hours a day (3
> shifts), it's now down to 1.3 months.
>
> If I were you, I'd literally be done by now.

 you wouldn't... because the laptop's design is still at the prototype
phase.  there's several months including redesigning and prototyping
the laptop PCBs before that casework redesign work can even begin.

> Maybe you're over-thinking it.

 i'm not: there's also the fact that the unanticipated costs have
eaten into the available budget, making it impossible to entirely
fufil the promises made (if this is news to anyone, it's not news:
i've mentioned this many times, many many months ago).  also mentioned
months ago, i am also therefore working on a staggered delivery
strategy, and also mentioned months ago i am looking at other projects
in order to raise extra funds.

one of those strategies mentioned is to have a second set of designs
on a second crowdsupply campaign *using the exact same PCBs and using
the exact same LCD as will go into the laptop* (an all-in-one PC).
that thus increases the ordering quantities for those parts and thus
*reduces* costs [for both campaigns], as well as reduces risk and
development costs for both projects.

 the 3D printer is an extra arm in that same strategy.  it's *not*
just being done "because i feel like it".

l.