Open Manufacturing - (How to Build 30 (SERB) Kits)

Step 2 Tools

Our ultimate goal is to have our very own oomlout rouge (except with less environmental impact). What this means is trying to bring all things feasible in house. Reducing dependence on outside suppliers allows us huge flexibility as well as keeping our costs (and ultimately the price of our products) as low as possible, however this does come at the expense of a degree of polish (apologies for no colour packaging).

The Tools:

Laser Cutter - (Brightstar LG3040tt 35 watt Laser) (details)

• A lovely small laser cutter, a fraction of the price of the Epilog lasers with very similar functionality, and Jim at Brightstar is a star when it comes to helping out with any questions. Used to cut down 9.5" x 9.5" acrylic sheets to lovely collections of SERB parts.

Table Saw - (standard table saw ours is a DeWalt)

• This is used to cut down the large sheets of acrylic we receive from our supplier into 9.5" squares.

Laser Printer - (standard laser printer ours is a Dell)

• Used for printing out all the packaging as well as instruction manuals.

Bubble Jet Printer - (a modified inkjet printer allowing us to print on small envelopes)

• An old ink-jet printer with the paper feed modified to allow the feeding of small envelopes.

Scales - (a surplus lab scale (0.01g) and a surplus kitchen scale (0.1g))

• We use these to help with counting bolts and quality checking before we ship.

Miscellaneous Tools

• drill press
• soldering iron
• wire snips
• screw driver
• pliers

(oomlout specific tools)

Wire Stripper - (a DIY wire stripper details found (here)

• This produces small strips of wire with the insulation removed from either end for plugging into breadboards.

Sticker Sheet Cutter - (a DIY machine that advances a programmed amount of sticker sheet details found (here) )

• To lift the acrylic sheets out of the laser cutter we use a sticker sheet, to produce these we need to measure out 9.5" lengths. This machine makes that easy.

Software

• Corel Draw 11 - What we use to design our products as well as prepare our packaging (an amazing open source equivalent is Inkscape (we are in the process of transitioning to this product))
• Adobe Acrobat - Used to convert our Corel Draw files into lovely PDFs
• Open Office - Used for note taking, spreadsheet'ing and the like