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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Expanding the ScopeRoller Product Line

I have been working on developing products that are cheap to make, and which serve a need.  Those of you who were part of my test group will recognize that this is an offshoot of what you saw, intended for a very specific market--but perhaps still useful for people with machine tools other than the Sherline brand.   As the page parodies Dirty Harry:
Have I turned this handwheel twenty-one times, or only twenty? In all this boredom I kind of lost track myself.... [Y]ou've got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky?
It is a cheap, semidisposable paper ruler that fits into the space under the saddle on the Sherline lathe bed or Sherline vertical mill column, and helps you to keep track of coarse movements of the cutting tool.  I have often found myself turning a piece of material to a particular diameter, or especially, when boring the interior of a cylinder, and I could not remember how many turns of the handwheel I had already made.  Now, as long as I keep track of roughly where I started, I can immediately tell within .050" how far I have moved the cutting tool.

I will be putting this product up on Google Shopping next, along with some similar measurement tools for other purposes.

Regular readers of my blog may be asking themselves, "With all the stuff that Clayton does, when does he find time to sleep?"  The answer, of course, should be said with a slightly maniacal tone: "Sleep is for weaklings!"

4 comments:

  1. It might be better if you were to make it out of silk-screened mylar with a water proof rubber based self adhesive backing.... that way coolant and moisture variation wouldn't mess things up....

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  2. It would be cheap, however. Read up on the model of disruptive change--it usually involves a cheaper, sometimes inferior product, that takes customers away from existing products.

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  3. So what are you getting for these?

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  4. $3 each; because of postage costs, and because the marginal weight increase of each is trivial, it makes sense to order several at a time. It is something of an experiment. Almost anyone with a little patience and a large format printer could make them more cheaply--but it would involve a bit of time and experimentation. For most people who need this, it makes more sense to order them.

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