Tag Archives: start up

Commerce Update

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I’ve done some exciting things in the world of commerce since my last post. After Pumping Station: One got a laser cutter I started cutting stuff from Thingiverse and thinking of products I could make with it.  I fixed the Thingiverse files for Tetris blocks and made some of those.  Then I thought of making glasses out of the Look of Disapproval from reddit.  Then Gretchen wanted me to make her something on the laser, so I made her a pendant with the kiss emoticon.  After a while I put all these things on my etsy store, Optical Awesome.  The Look of Disapproval Glasses started really taking off, and I’ve now sold over 150 of them!  Exciting stuff.  I’ve decided to move all my e-commerce to etsy since they make it so easy and deliver me traffic through their search.

I also sold things at Maker Faire NY, which was great.  My necklaces and t-shirts were big hits and I just about made enough money to cover the expenses of the trip. (Lesson #1, don’t dig so big a hole that you have to have a ton of success to get back out of it.)  I kept track of a few things I started out doing wrong and did my best to fix on the spot, so hopefully those mistakes won’t happen again:

  1. Post a price or people don’t know it’s for sale.  With all the makers just exhibiting things, it’s easy to get confused.
  2. If you put t-shirts out on a table people will look through them for their size.  Either have sizes out there or hang them up behind you.
  3. Don’t underestimate the number of girls there.  I didn’t think necklaces would sell well, but a ton of girls came by and loved them.
  4. People loved trying on the look of disapproval glasses and sending pics to their friends.  If I had a kiosk to do that it would be nice for collecting emails.
Also I got a bunch of new product ideas from people coming up to my table.  I haven’t acted on them yet, soon though!

Hero’s Fountain – Test 1

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By the end of August, I intend to build a working Hero’s Fountain.  I made my first attempt the other day.  It didn’t work, but I identified a number of ways I can improve it for my next attempt.

Below is the test apparatus.  It uses a plastic bowl and two milk jugs for the water vessels.  The nozzles are pieces of copper tubing and are attached with plumber’s epoxy.  The hoses are simple nylon (I think?  The material for that isn’t really important.) tubing and are attached to the nozzles with twist ties.

Hero's Fountain Apparatus 1

Hero's Fountain Apparatus 1

Hero's Fountain Apparatus 1 Internal

Hero's Fountain Apparatus 1 Internal


The first mistake was using the plumber’s epoxy.  I used it because it’s simple and fast and I’d seen it used successfully in a similar application before.  Unfortunately, after I was half done attaching the nozzles I saw the instructions said it’s not recommended for use with polyethylene, which is what milk jugs are made of.  As you can see, the epoxy didn’t bond with the milk jugs, which broke the air seal. This is most visible on the leftmost nozzle in the picture above.

Beyond that first failure the rest is more speculative.  My apparatus has both lower chambers at the same height, which means the water has a long way to rise from the blue topped milk jug to go through the fountain spout at the top.  The air moving between the pink chamber and the blue chamber will rise much easier, so I believe raising the blue chamber to shorten this distance will improve performance.

Also, it takes a substantial amount of water to fill the tubes between the chambers, at least compared to the amount of water in the red bowl.  Priming the tubes with water would probably improve performance, but hopefully that will prove unnecessary.

Finally, as the water drained from the red bowl I didn’t consider that it would form a vortex.  That pushes some air down the tube as well as water.  I don’t think that’s a problem, in fact it might make the machine run a little longer, but it’s something I will pay attention to in my next attempt.

Student Run Companies

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The other day I saw this device linked from digg. It’s not really that special, just a machine for climbing rope really fast. It’s certainly a nice piece of engineering, and it’ll be useful in certain professions, but the thing that really gets me about the article is this:

The students founded a company, Atlas Devices, based in Cambridge, MA, to commercialize the device, which is about the size of a power drill.

Too many times I’ve seen this same story. Students from MIT invent some cool device and start a company selling it. Why is it so easy for them to start companies like that all the time? Isn’t it hard to develop an idea into a marketable product? Is MIT doing anything else but forming groups to develop products? Most importantly, why haven’t they given me a call yet? ;)