To represent the world as systems of interdependent logics we need not elevate those logics to the level of myth, nor focus on the logics of our myths. Instead, we would have to meditate on the logics in everything, to see the world as one built of weird, rusty machines whose gears squeal as they grind against one another, rather than as stories into which we might write ourselves as possible characters.
From a very crazy, very good article about Star Trek, language, and meaning.
The Public Radio has moved a little slowly over the past few months. Zach has been busy, and I've got too much on my plate, and scheduling has been tricky. But we *have* made progress, and I'm here to tell you about it.
After the last hardware round, we spent an hour and developed a feature wishlist. It included:
All of these (plus a few more technical ones - see our GitHub repository for the current designs) have been completed. A few stragglers have yet to be implemented:
I like the way the new design looks. Eagle is *not* my favorite piece of design software, but board layout is fun - and I'm really proud of our current design.
On Sunday evening, we ordered a batch of 10 of these from Advanced Circuits. Advanced is expensive, but they turn the parts around quickly; ours should ship today. Meanwhile, our custom antennas departed (two or three weeks late, but whatever) Hong Kong yesterday. With any luck, the antennas will show up within a day or two of the boards - giving us time to assemble a few PCBs and then quickly put the radios into service.
In the meantime, Zach hacked an awesome way to tune the radios using an Arduino. It should save us a lot of time, and will be *key* when we're shipping these things across the country.
So. Movement. Happening.
Photos from life, because you (presumably) care.
One of the most striking things about McMaster-Carr's website is the nearly nonexistent top level navigation. I thought I'd compare it with some similar sites for context.
McMaster's top level navigation has six primary items:
The Search bar has a dropdown that autopopulates results as the user enters text. The Contact, Bookmarks, Order History and Build Order links are just that - links. No dropdown/flyout, nothing.
The unauthenticated site has a small "Log in" dropdown at the top right that takes an email address. The authenticated site's account link drops down to show a "Log out" and a "Settings" link.
MSC has too much top level navigation to describe in detail here, but a few takeaways:
My main beef with Amazon is their "Your Account" dropdown menu. Why do I - a visitor to the Amazon home page - need to know that "Manage Your Content and Devices" used to be called "Manage your Kindle"?
Elsewhere, the "Shop by Department" dropdown has seventeen items in it - each with a flyout containing images and as many as nineteen sub-items.
Uline's homepage is straightforward and visually consistent. But they insist on separating their dropdown menus by "Products" (containing 34 subcategories) and "Uline Products," (26 subcategories) which as a customer seems totally arbitrary.
Also, free offers? Really?
My rule: If it's okay that your flyout/dropdown menu obscures a large block of content, then it probably isn't relevant.
Grainger's site is uniquely complicated by the space devoted to its retail stores, but that's no excuse. Just take the top row. They've separated out "Sign in" and "Register now" (two mutually exclusive use cases), and have their marketing email signup (which I don't see why I'd want) right there too.
I find this to be an endless opportunity for iteration and refinement. It can always be shorter, quicker, closer together.
More Public Radio updates tomorrow, or check the GitHub repo here.
I've spent some time over the past few weeks thinking about my favorite B2B ecommerce sites. Here are my current faves (in no particular order), and why.
Box's "Business" page is an easy-access portal to a complete set of product features & use cases. While I tend to recoil a bit at talk of "product features and use cases," the way they display them here is attractive and convenient.
Considering the breadth of Cat's product line, their main site is an exercise in simplicity. My primary complaint is their browse feature, which uses multi-layered dropdown menus.
Olympus NDT's video gallery gives one-stop access to hours of content - covering the lion's share of their product line. Considering that many of these devices run into (and past) the tens of thousands of dollars, being able to see them in action is a nice feature.
(I know they're primarily b2c, but whatever - *tons* of businesses buy tools on Amazon)
Amazon's "Improve Your Recommendations" helps users tailor the products that the site recommends them. For small businesses in particular, this feature can be really helpful in separating personal from business purchases.
I know the term "eutectic" from brazing, where the chemical composition of your filler rod changes over heat/cool cycles. It comes up every once in a while, and I always reference something about cheese, and how it changes when it melts & cools (i.e. is non-eutectic).
I had never fact checked this until yesterday, when Vlad called me on my random claim. So I did a quick search and came up with this:
So, I *think* I'm right for most cheeses. But as this points out, mozzarella (and low-moisture mozzarella in particular) seems to buck that guideline.
Anyway. The more you know.
A problem I've had in real life: I made an order from a supplier, and I know the day that it's going to arrive, but I won't be at the actual delivery location when it shows up. This could be because I'm on a jobsite, or there's a dedicated delivery location where I'm working, or maybe the UPS guy just always leaves things at my neighbor's house.
Well, McMaster-Carr seems to have noticed this, and they're now integrating their carriers' shipping & delivery info into their own delivery notification system. It's a great feature, and I got the chance to try it out the other day.
In this case, Zach was picking the package up in Southampton, and I was going to be in the city when it was delivered. He had asked for the tracking number from me but I (being lazy) never got it to him.
But I *had* put my cell phone number in the checkout dialog, and I got this great text message - which includes info on the parts I ordered - when it showed up. A quick screenshot & text to Zach, and he was able to grab it without any problem.
This is a really, really great feature. By giving their customers access to delivery data on their own terms, McMaster makes the entire procurement process a lot easier.
Paul Graham, in an old essay:
Obscurity is like health food—unpleasant, perhaps, but good for you. Whereas fame tends to be like the alcohol produced by fermentation. When it reaches a certain concentration, it kills off the yeast that produced it.
These are parts for my wallet design, which I'm working on with Christy Holzer. On the bottom left is my personal wallet, which I carry daily. On the top left are natural, vegetable-tanned leather parts. On the right are those same parts after being tanned (naturally, in the sun) and lightly oiled with Neatsfoot oil.
The tanned & oiled parts will be sewn up (by hand, by yours truly) tomorrow. I may switch over to one of these (be your own beta tester; eat your own dogfood), and will give the second to a friend.
Then I'll be tanning, oiling & sewing a small batch (with Christy) and hope to be putting them up for sale (and/or crowdfunding) soon.
Kane & my Sony A7 thumbrest finally got tested the other day:
The verdict: it needs to be shifted back somewhat, so that your thumb can reach it a bit easier.
Iteration to come!
This is what an order of 1000 Taiwanese potentiometers looks like:
These are for the upcoming production run of The Public Radio. We're probably doing a design revision on the boards in the next week, and will be assembling a small batch in-house before we send the rest out to a PCB assembly house.
FYI, these are a non-stock part from Taiwan Alpha Electronics. They were very easy to deal with and shipped (on time) for delivery in Brooklyn just 32 business days after payment.
There's more on our potentiometer requirements in an older post, here.
+1 for breakfast with a smart friend. Always good for taking a step back & seeing a bit of perspective.
I like mass market products a lot. But I want to really love the things that I make, and that's hard to do if you're trying to appeal to a mass audience. Compromises need to be made when you're designing for a diverse customer base; when the market is smaller, it allows the product developer to be a bit more choosy.
I'm excited that making short-run products is getting easier - but there's still a lot to be done. These are a couple of the things that have been bothering me.
As a designer of traditionally manufactured parts, features are specified according to more or less knowable tool properties. When I place a drilled hole, the results will be predictable, regardless of my supplier's equipment or process.
The same is not the case with additive manufacturing, where build orientation and support structures matter a lot. As a designer of these parts, I want to be able to simulate varying configurations myself, so that I can specify the build procedure to my suppliers. Simplifying the CAD/CAM toolchain - ideally with solid/NURBS, T-Splines, topology optimization *and* build plate prep all in one application - will be crucial to lowering the barrier of entry to AM.
When designing a part - especially those used in assemblies - surface finish is often critical. With additive manufacturing, surface finish may vary widely, depending on build orientation and support structures. In some cases it may be possible to reorient a part in order to improve finish.
But today, these determinations are preformed by machine operators whose knowledge of the process is experiential and not publicly available - making it difficult for designers to know precisely what they'll get. Machine manufacturers and job shops should work together to develop design guidelines and detailed surface finish specs, alleviating this uncertainty.
I love Shapeways. But they *need* to offer secondary services, i.e. tapping and tolerancing.
Again, I love Shapeways. But they *need* to offer assembly, and custom packaging, and small parts that are traditionally manufactured (i.e. bolts).
3D printing is a cool technology. But so is stamping, and you don't see sheet metal shops selling useful products directly to consumers. Without a supply chain management offering, I believe that Shapeways will be confined to just selling parts - not products.
I love McMaster-Carr. But they need an API that can talk to both my e-commerce and the API of my manufacturer. When my customers purchase an assembly from me, my supply chain manager (whether it's Shapeways or somebody else) would automatically place orders through McMaster-Carr and my manufacturing partner(s) - with all parts being shipped to the SCM and assembled just-in-time for shipment.
I'm all for services that provide me access to a wide range of manufacturers. But it is critical to the design process that that service be completely transparent. Like it or not, most designers are *not* manufacturing agnostic, and speaking directly to a manufacturer - and preferably to the machine operator who will actually be setting up & running your part - is key to producing successful designs.
Too much effort is being spent trying to disrupt procurement in ways that adds an opaque layer between me and my supplier, and the end result is that I learn little from the process. All I want is for you to put suppliers in front of me and then get out of the way.
Why aren't these people talking about their processes? Why aren't they sharing the non-NDA work they've done? Why aren't they showing me the capabilities of the new machines they have? I would gladly pay a premium for a shop that's actively showing me the engineering feats they're accomplishing. Get bloggy - the openness is quite becoming.
I hope it is, at least :)
From a talk called The Value of Science. Emphasis mine.
But I would like not to underestimate the value of the world view which is the results of scientific effort. We have been led to imagine all sorts of things infinitely more marvelous than the imaginings of poets and dreamers of the past. It shows that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. For instance, how much more remarkable it is for us all to be stuck - half of us upside down - by a mysterious attraction to a spinning ball that has been swinging in space for billions of years than to be carried on the back of an elephant supported on a tortoise swimming in a bottomless sea.
From an old essay:
A lot of startups worry "what if Google builds something like us?" Actually big companies are not the ones you have to worry about-- not even Google. The people at Google are smart, but no smarter than you; they're not as motivated, because Google is not going to go out of business if this one product fails.
I think that being smart barely enters the equation. Motivation, though, counts.
Alfie Kohn, as quoted by Jacob Kaplan-Moss in a very good piece about "unlimited" vacation policies:
To describe much of what is wrong with our workplaces is to enumerate the effects of restricting people’s sense of self-determination...people are most motivated when they are able to participate in making decisions about organizational goals.
Agreed.
From February, 2010:
What I wrote about this part then:
This is part of a drawbar for my Steinel horizontal mill. I decided to make it in two pieces - a 3/8" rod, threaded on one end, which slips into a cap that was turned from 1" rod. This is that cap. It took a few steps to make - little while in the lathe, a few minutes in the mill, little while back in the lathe. It's not quite finished - I gotta TIG the two parts together tomorrow - but jeez, I'm finally close to getting this machine set up.
In prep for my lil' essay on McMaster-Carr, I went through and updated the parts list for The Public Radio. Note here how a number of the parts (the ones with the 9-digit alphanumeric McMaster-Carr part numbers) have incomplete/inaccurate part data - and moreover, don't include hyperlinks to the McMaster product page, etc.
Also note: How much I like this drawing :)
Last year, I wrote a post describing my feature requirements for a modern parts management system. Re-reading it today, I realize that it doesn't really say what the user interaction would feel like - or how it would work at all. I hope to provide some of that here.
The key is this: Integrate small parts inventory management into the product design, prototyping, and maintenance, repair & operations processes. I'll treat these as three separate use cases, though they're all part of the same product lifecycle.
The reader will note that I believe McMaster-Carr to be the strongest positioned organization to take on these tasks. As a longtime fan of McMaster and a student of their intense customer focus, beautiful interface design, and impressive supply chain management, I hope that they seriously consider these recommendations - as I'm sure that their competitors will be soon.
Note: I diagrammed an early version of this idea in a flowchart here.
My current "system," during prototyping on The Public Radio.
As a hardware product designer, I want my suppliers' parts catalogs integrated into my design environment, so that I can seamlessly browse for new parts and view part data directly from my modeling software.
Autodesk Inventor is my go-to design software, and McMaster-Carr is my go-to parts supplier. I'm constantly browsing McM for a part, then adding it to an open order, then downloading the STEP file and importing that into my model. I consider this a luxury: McM's decision to include STEPs for the vast majority of their mechanical parts makes my job a ton easier. But the process is convoluted, and a lot of part data is lost. On parts like socket cap screws, for instance, McM tracks the following data:
But their STEP files contain none of that; all that's included is the part number and the material, which is often stripped of a lot of useful data (parts described as "Type 316 Stainless Steel" on McMaster's site often show up as either "Stainless" - or worse, "Generic" - in the STEP file).
For McMaster-Carr to become more fully integrated into my design and procurement process, they should include comprehensive part data in all of their STEP files.
Moreover, there's a larger opportunity for McMaster to integrate their catalog directly into my design environment. If their catalog were available as a plugin for Inventor/Solidworks, designers could browse, design, and purchase all from one seamless interface - which I believe they will demand in the near future. Look at Plethora and Sunstone Circuits (and in web development, Squarespace) - across the hardware world, the movement is towards integrating design & supply chain management. McMaster-Carr is perfectly positioned to become a powerful player in the field.
As a prototyping mechanic, I want real-time internet enabled inventory management, so that I can understand what parts I have on hand & prepare for shortages before they happen.
Small parts management sucks. With their lightning-quick delivery and vast catalog, McMaster is the cornerstone of most prototyping shops' parts management system. But that solution is awkward at best, and often requires simply ordering more parts, even if we have some (somewhere) on hand.
Small scale inventory management has historically been extremely difficult, but today it's increasingly easy. For instance, Quirky has shown us that it's not that hard to keep track of the number of eggs you have in your fridge, and Tesla's iOS app shows the charge state of your car's battery. It's only a matter of time before the same is the case with things throughout our physical lives, and McMaster-Carr is uniquely positioned to take small parts management on.
I envision a small parts cabinet full of sensors (some combination of force, optical, or proximity), which would periodically update an online database as to the quantity of parts inside each bin. But you needn't even start there. An easy MVP would be an iOS app that allowed the user to snap a photo of a small parts cabinet and tag each bin with a part number & quantity. The photos would be collected and stored online, and would be linked to the customer's McM order history.
Then, when a mechanic takes a handful of bolts out of a drawer, all he needs to do is update the inventory count from his app. By tapping around a set of linked photos in the app, he's directed to the bin that he's physically looking at - and he can confirm visually that the parts are what they appear to be. By tapping on an "info" tab, he brings up the inventory data (including links to a 3D part file, technical data, order dates, and a list of mating parts/assemblies that the part has been used in - culled from the Inventor plugin described above) and assign a piece count to a job & edit quantity on hand in moments.
McMaster-Carr should build this system - starting with an iOS app that offers basic inventory management. Doing so would give them a view into their customers' usage data, and would help users streamline their restocking process. The days of bins labeled with bits of paper are numbered, and users will soon demand personalized (and internet-enabled) inventory management systems. McMaster is in a unique position in the marketplace, and has the opportunity - if they work now - to strengthen their foothold in small parts management.
As a maintenance, repair & operations engineer, I want a single process that incorporates machine data, relevant spare parts, and procurement, so that I can get my facility back online more quickly.
A large part of McMaster-Carr's business is in supporting maintenance, repair & operations (MRO) professionals. These customers have unique needs; their ability to get the right part, right now, can have huge impacts on their company's ability to recover from unplanned downtime due to a broken machine.
In many cases, MRO engineers will find themselves with a broken part and will need to replace it immediately. Doing so will require careful measurement to determine the part's specifications, a process that can be difficult and imprecise - especially if the broken part has been mangled and/or lost.
McMaster should work to establish a system of folksonomy - user contributed data - that would allow MRO customers to tag parts with information about how and where they can be used. For instance, a particular serpentine belt might be commonly used as a replacement spindle drive belt on an old lathe. Instead of finding this data on the web - and then cross referencing part numbers back to the McMaster-Carr catalog - a tag could be submitted to the relevant part directly in the McM database. Subsequent users could then find the information they need right in the McM website/app.
Such a system would be complicated, for sure. It would require a significant effort on McM's part to hire and train community managers, who would monitor and vet user submitted data on a daily basis. But doing so would allow McMaster to leverage the huge - and growing - network of hardware professionals and enthusiasts. This community is sorely lacking a single go-to reference, and McMaster is in many ways the strongest candidate (with its enormous existing database of part, material & process data) to do so.
In order to pull off these tasks, I believe McMaster-Carr will need to become more transparent about their processes and inventory data. This will be a difficult process - I myself struggle with transparency - but I believe the payoff will be well worth it. A new generation of hardware professionals & hackers have come of age in a new information paradigm, and they are increasingly responsible for purchasing decisions in small and large companies alike. These people have grown up reading Amazon's shareholder letters and following the official Google tech blog. They expect to be part of a company's product development process, and will contribute their own time, energy, and expertise to projects that historically would have been developed in private. McMaster-Carr - with its huge network of enthusiastic users - should leverage that collective energy, and work with its customers to bring parts management into the 21st century.
From a 2005 essay titled "What Business Can Learn from Open Source":
Those in the print media who dismiss the writing online because of its low average quality are missing an important point: no one reads the average blog. In the old world of channels, it meant something to talk about average quality, because that's what you were getting whether you liked it or not. But now you can read any writer you want. So the average quality of writing online isn't what the print media are competing against. They're competing against the best writing online.
