Peter "Sci" Turpin

Finally I’m starting to push out my own shirt designs to go alongside the UKFur logo shirts I already sell.
This one was by far the most popular of my concept sketches, so of course has been first to get cleaned up and vectored.

Yesterday I sent off the design to the shirt printers. It’s cutting it a little fine, but with luck this shirt may be available to buy at my RBW dealers stall on November 6th & 7th.

I’m looking at having it as a cream and brown two-colour screen-print on unisex khaki shirts to start with, followed by specifically ladies-fit sizes. Pricing will likely be around £15, but may change if other costs come up in production.

Got Ferret?

Many thanks to pub-going ferret Frettchen for being inspiringly cute!

Mirrored from The blog-hub for Peter "Sci" Turpin.

Got what’s likely to be the final quote in from Screens for the next shirt order. It’s been a long time coming, going through various options and revisions.
A £500 order will get all the shirts up to stock (previously tried to keep a stock of 4 of each), increase the held stock on some to 5, and widen the range to include some ladies-fit shirts.

The ladies fit will be standard black, light-pink and a blue one with the “union” variant on. There didn’t seem to be much interest in other colour options. The blue will probably sell for £13.50-£14 unless a cheaper shirt option comes up. The other ladies shirts will probably be about £12. The non-unisex base shirts cost more.

Onward and upward though! The range widens! And I had a dream about the proposed Ferret shirt last night which had the colours perfect on it! So thank-you subconscious!

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from "Dreamwidth Creative Blog" into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Mirrored from The blog-hub for Peter "Sci" Turpin.

42 new shirts arrived today in record time (just 2 working days after I ordered them!). That gives me 4 of each size of both the UKFur Classic/Wolf shirts, and the colour “Union” design. There’s been little interest in the dragon shirts, so haven’t picked up any more of them for the moment.

If I run out of any at the con I’ll take pre-orders for the next batch.

Okay, now back to the workshop!

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from "Dreamwidth Creative Blog" into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Mirrored from The blog-hub for Peter "Sci" Turpin.

Run out of Shore 40. Need to order some more in and write up a proper supplies tally sheet so I don’t get caught short again in future. Only one current order should be affected.

I’m also down to the dregs of the water-clear resin. Will probably only restock on demand for the moment.

Also have created a page for the Bonsai Repstrap on the RepRapWiki; http://objects.reprap.org/wiki/Bonsai_Repstrap

Need to place orders for more shirts for Confuzzled in a months time. Hoping to have one of my own designs included in that order.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from "Dreamwidth Creative Blog" into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Mirrored from The blog-hub for Peter "Sci" Turpin.

Once again, things have been busy here! I’m currently processing orders, albeit with a small delay (manifold broke off the degassing chamber and I’m waiting for the glue to set).

There have been two major developments however.

UKFur
I’ve now purchased the UKFur merchandise shop from previous owner Tigerfire, who’s no longer as involved in the Furry scene as he once was.
In the next couple of days I should receive the first batch of new stock, to get a small number of the most in-demand shirts and sizes.

The three designs of shirt

It’s out of stock of the lanyards, but I’m looking around for a supplier that will provide them in minimum orders of less than £200.

However still have large numbers of vinyl stickers and silicone wristbands.

Confuzzled is just a month away now, so have no fear, you will be able to get your UKFur merch!

In the meantime though, wristbands are £1.50, stickers are 50p each.
B&W shirts are £10 in Small to XL sizes, and £11 in XXL and XXXL.
Blue shirts are £12 in Small to XL sizes, and £13 in XXL and XXXL.
£2 for postage, and I still take paypal.

If I’m out of stock, let me know the size you’re after so I can get more in and I’ll let you know when I do.

Chest sizes: S – 35/37″ M – 38/40″ L – 41/43″ XL – 44/46″ XXL – 47/49″ 3XL – 50/52″

Reprap
Shortly after buying the UKFur shop I also acquired a lot of 2000 surplus stepper motors.

All boxes full of motors (ignore the SEM bits)

I strongly believe the future is in 3D printers, but there’s a big supply issue. Even the home-made machines tend to require you to already have a 3D printer to make parts for it.
The way around this is to make a bootstrapping machine to make the initial parts. A rep-strap.

The motors I have are smaller than those advised in the Reprap project, but I have my own take on it. I’m developing a small, semi-portable 3D printer, that should be fairly cheap and easy to modify. I’m looking at a sale price in the £200 range, and a quantity of around 500 machines.
Because of the small size of these printers, I’m dubbing it the Bonsai Repstrap.

It’s an ambitious project I know! But if you want to follow how things are going with it, take a look at..

The Creative Blog
I’ve set up a journal over at Dreamwidth as a stand-alone creative blog. While this won’t be strictly business related, it will include and business creations and day-to-day activities as well as my personal works.
Dreamwidth incorporates RSS feeds into the blogs, so you don’t have to sign up to follow it. It also accepts OpenID logins, so you can comment if you like.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from "Dreamwidth Creative Blog" into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Mirrored from The blog-hub for Peter "Sci" Turpin.

Paw-pads:
Well, the Shore 75 rubber is now here, the 60 has been returned. I’ve not yet caught up with the orders though. There’s a rare collective motivation going on in the house right now that’s saying “Yes, let’s actually clear stuff out!”

Workshop:
Over the past few days I’ve filled one of the wheelie-bins all by myself just with stuff from the workshop. And there’s more yet to come!
It’s been a really harsh thing to do though. I’m a packrat, and I do tend to use the things I pick up sooner or later. But it’s best not to dwell on it all. The space is far more important atm.

Reprap:
Ordered some more Bonsai prototyping bits, but the aluminium tube was out of stock in the end, so I’m going to have to go with stainless instead.
You see, the first simplification I’m making to the Mendel layout is to use the frame as the runners by wrapping the studding with push-fit tube. It should also have the benefit of making assembly and adjustment easier, if I cut the pipes to the correct lengths. Just assemble and tighten.

Art-bike:
Also stripped down the big bicycle frame someone dumped in the alleyway. The front fork stem is the same diameter as the stem on the unicycle I picked up last year. Will have to do some careful grinding and welding, but fitting the unicycle up as the front wheel should be fine. And the frames pedal cranks look like they’ll swap with the unicycle ones, so I can hopefully get the mechanism I was after working alright.
It should make it all into a nice half-horse and buggy. Eventually.

Blacksmithing:
I’ve got a rough forge assembled, but I still need to line it with refractory. Have fire cement and perlite, but think I need to pick up some dry sand too. Well, and some charcoal.

Video:
Got some footage from the digital camera that needs editing. Also haven’t yet tested the capture machine I assembled last week. It’s on my to-do list.

T-shirts:
Seeing who’s interested in what types and sizes. Think I can afford to get one atm. No reply from supplier atm. Will call them in the morning and make an order for the large blue UKFur shirts.
Also converted the carrying case that came with the shirts into something more like a portable shop by chopping down an Ikea hanging rail and mounting fixings inside the case. Now I can store the rail inside the case and use the case as the base of it.

Art:
Yeah, I’m behind on this. But I am catching up.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from "Dreamwidth Creative Blog" into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]

Mirrored from The blog-hub for Peter "Sci" Turpin.