New Design, New Packaging and Behind-The-Scenes

Let's jump right into today's post...

First up, we are making resin available again.

We stopped it for a while there, not for any particular reason, we just got quite busy with other materials.

We are trialing in-house 3D-printed packaging for the pens (initially) as a trial.

Usually we use tins, which of course, have to be custom-made and shipped in. And that's been working really, really well. We do the same for our other products as well — the SlideClick Utility Blade Knife and the sliders.

We have a 3D printer now that can do multiple colors, and we thought it was a good chance to be able to get our logo on it.

We still use foam inside and that kind of thing, but rather than using an off-the-shelf size tin — which is what we use — the tin isn’t custom-sized for us. It’s a standard size that we have printed with our logo and colors. Instead of that, we can make this pen box any size or shape that we want.

Now, of course, it's 3D printing — there’s only so much of a quality feel that you can have to it. But, truthfully, there is something about it I really like.

There’s something about knowing that it’s made in-house, ...and that we’ve designed it and made it ourselves.

So we’re going to make it as a trial and see how it goes with the pens initially.

We are bringing back a few of the most popular designs of sliders.

I think I talked about this last week. I showed some CAD screenshots of what was coming - and we finally actually have some prototypes coming off.

But, perhaps inevitably, they're not going to be the same. They fit the new-style plates, but also, we're doing different texturing, updating the overall shape. Little tweaks and adjustments as our designing abilities are getting better from those initial designs from over three and a half years ago.

Below is the first of the designs that I'm working on initially. This is the Wide Boy - which is a little different from the initial Wide Boy. Overall shape is the same, but quite different.

The highest-priced slider we currently sell is the Pebble Dimple. And one of the reasons for this is because of how it's made.

This particular slider is made on a machine where we can only do one at a time. Typically, we can do eight slider bodies at a time on one of our machines — but with this one, we can only do one at a time.

And compared to some other sliders, it actually has one or two more operations. Typically, a slider will be two to three operations; this one is four to five, I believe.

Not only that, but it takes longer than any other slider — or almost as long. It’s right up there with the rest of them in terms of how long it takes.

And on top of that, the machine that it runs on is a bit of a different beast compared to our other machines. They’re all good machines, but this one’s really meant for medical and aerospace things — like, really, it’s just… it’s like a Formula 1 machine.

There’s no reason for telling you this — I was just sort of watching them run this week. We finally got it up and running. It was just… yeah, it’s nice to see it working. And it’s, interestingly — not that you need to know this, but —

If I actually charged what I need to charge, or should be charging, for this slider — for the length of time it takes, the number of operations, the amount of human interaction, and it’s been zirconium so far, done one at a time on this machine — this really should be a $400 slider. So even though it’s the most expensive slider we make, it’s arguably the most well-priced thing, if you can believe that, relative to what goes into it. So I like making them, but also, we’re not making a lot of money with this slider. It’s just funny how business works sometimes.

Here’s a short video of what I’m talking about — the machine, and the sliders.