Interesting would be items whose manufacture could be automatized to some extent, but this is not necessary.
I am not particularly interested in the legality of this at the moment. But safety considerations could be important.
Browse through those lists and find something you can build.
I really believe the U.S. military is in the midst of a large scale transfer of military spending from traditional large defense contractors to smaller, innovative companies. The Air Force has even opened its own venture capital arm and is actively investing in small businesses. Most, if not every, branch in the military publicly posts contracts for small businesses to bid on.
I think Anduril is a great example of the possibilities in the "new" defense space.
What's interesting is this shift is very reminiscent of military manufacturing in Japan during World War 2; much of the manufacturing was actually done by small businesses of < 30 employees in "garages" scattered around the country instead of very large factories. That was one of the reasons American bombing by Superfortresses was so ineffective at first, and one of the reasons incendiary bombs began being used.
Happy to provide more detail on this. I've been thinking about this space for awhile.
I urge everyone to study WWII history. Overnight, they converted button/zip manufacturers to making carbureator parts for Airplanes. Literally, overnight. At 8pm, they were producing mother of pearl buttons. By noon next day, they were making first batch of pins for the deflector plate.
Today's generation has no clue what happens in trying times. They need to study history to see what really happened, almost overnight.
I asked what the benefit would be of funding private enterprises that private enterprises are already willing to fund. And he provided a nonsensical spiel about WW2-era policies without explaining why those policies were necessary today, given that private enterprises are already willing to spend the money to fund those activities.
His suggestion would result in massive amounts of fraud and wealthy techbros getting free toys they don't need from the U.S. government courtesy of their fellow taxpayers.
I read a lot of WW2 history, but not about the manufacturing part. Any good books you’d recommend?
There’s an entire service industry around helping businesses apply. The companies that I’ve seen be successful at it hired several people with SBIR experience specifically to handle the grant proposals.
I had 3 successful NSF proposals and could not have done it without an experienced team helping me just with the legalese and process.
My partner reached out to a few small business development centers but, while they were very eager to help, we ultimately received only very minor feedback and a general thumbs up. I'd say in the two years it took us to hone a winning technical proposal, my partner was able to become somewhat of an expert in the rules. During that time we also applied for a non-SBIR government grant, unsuccessfully, where we lost a lot of points for being a 2-man team. If you're willing to put in the time, it's very doable to write an application which follows the rules.
In fact, I'd say one thing we ran into was finding ourselves "inventing" rules because we were overly cautious with our compliance to what we thought were the rules. The application truly is the most difficult part of compliance for a SBIR Phase I.
The problems with our Phase I were purely technical. We weren't able to advance the state-of-the-art enough to be able to write a convincing commercialization plan. And I don't think there was any consulting firm we could have hired to fix that problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efraim_Diveroli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Packouz
It is a daunting task to register and follow the procedures, and you must be very attentive to detail as a small business owner; however, there are a ton of resources from the Small Business Administration to assist. Don't hesitate to contact them. Be persistent, patient, and proactive.
It used to be much harder than it is today, which is why it might seem to most people that federal contracting is a corrupt good ol' boy network; newcomers simply didn't follow the instructions right, due to complexity and/or confusion. Today though, it's a perfect time to get in the door.
So even if your spouse doesn't check all three boxes, having the company officially be owned by your wife can help.
It is a similar requirement for veteran owned small businesses and I imagine “gaming” this would be tantamount to fraud.
About as far as I’ve seen be acceptable for “gaming” things is to use a joint venture that is 51% owned/controlled by whatever interest group (e.g., veteran, women, disadvantaged, all of the above, etc.).
Not saying it doesn’t happen, but it’s not a common occurrence from my experience (15+ years active duty, as government employee, and working for a contractor on the actual contract/BD side).
Claiming a preference can be fraud, and is often abused, but... in reality, nobody's really checking unless there's a justifiable reason to. Not that I'm endorsing such fraud, and you're right, 51% is usually the safe way to go, but many LLC type setups don't have any easy way to help determine that. It's really quite time consuming and intrusive to determine "control" as the person writing or signing the contract. It's very much based on the assumption of honesty, unless there's some clear indication otherwise (and yes, due diligence is performed and documented, at least to some extent - it isn't just a Google search for "companies that sell widgets near me").
For an extreme example, I won't know that a company is a sweatshop using undocumented drug addicted children if their representations and warranties documentation says they don't.
However, it is worth mentioning that it is definitely a dangerous game to play, even if the government doesn’t do anything.
Government contracting world is pretty cut throat and all it takes is a competitor, a partner, or an employee catching wind of the foul play and you make your company pretty vulnerable to a few things:
1) extortion for work share (e.g., a partner company threatening to out you to the contracting officer if they don’t give more work share % or some other form of monetary compensation)
2) A competitor contesting the contract award due to the awarded company not meeting the set aside requirements. This can be very costly and lead to the government being forced to look into things more thoroughly. It’s also public record and could seriously damage a company’s reputation in perpetuity.
3) A company employee filing a qui tam suit under the False Claims Act. This can lead to at best, a costly settlement, and at worse, repaying the government even after the work has already been performed.
It’s definitely not a route I recommend taking!
One simple example is a time I was trying to by doors. Simple doors, no special requirements, just doors, materials and installation, with knobs requiring a keyed access. The chosen provider bid properly, gave their description of key control and associated maintenance ("who has keys and what happens if we lose the keys"). Small business, local, etc. won the award. Competitor had a fit and submitted (after award) significant proof that the winning bidder was falsifying their minority owned status and had changed their business name several times to avoid previous poor past performance marks. TLDR the complainant was right, and eventually won the award.
It doesn't take a lot to get ruined, so please, just be honest. If you aren't, someone will know.
Past Performance.
You can probably get away with screwing over the government once, maybe even twice. But good luck once you're legally and nationally blacklisted.
Can you elaborate on why you feel uncomfortable with the idea of defense? Related[0]
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_operations_other_than...
If you stop spending in the US and assume that Russia and China will sit idly by without invading our allies, you are living in a land of fantasy.
Kumbaya, m-fer.
You could reasonably extrapolate from bodies like the EU and think there is a chance we end up with a single global order that doesn't include war in the future.
That said I think you can look at the current and say with some confidence that there are at least a few wars left - there are too many current armed conflicts, and too many threats of armed conflict, to seriously believe otherwise.
How, precisely, does one extrapolate from the EU (of all places) to a one world government? The variation across the world in everything from cultural and religious norms to even technical approaches to solving problems is extreme, and it has been like this since forever. The genesis of the EU seems, in my view, an evolution of American dominance of the continent after WWII. Is that what you mean? Further American influence tends to encourage (or coerce) countries into further integration?
I’d put the odds of any of that happening on a global scale at approximately zero, because there actually have been globe spanning empires in the past (multiple iterations, in point of fact), and they all collapsed or shed their empires when it became clear ruling it was no longer in the interest of the Sovereign or the Subjects.
The EU is far from perfect but is an early iteration of a workable model. I can’t see this happening even in somewhere with a pretty similar societal model as the US currently as the political siuation is so polarised.
I think the OP probably doesn’t have a problem with actual defense projects, but if you’ve been paying any attention over the last 70 years, you will know that the US has attacked many countries under the guise of “defense”.
You might want to read up on the "Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance". Essentially, "the rest of the Americas".
That mostly works because the set of potential aggressors is small. (Nicaragua and Panama). OK, fine, the US might want to, but they're close enough partners that they don't need to.
I think that might be the crux of what GP was getting at. There's more to it than the ability to win (and in a hopeful dreamy world, I'd wish we can all get to the state where collaboration is always the obvious better choice, but that's obviously at least a few hundred years off... something to strive for, though)
AKA -- free trade. Global free trade exists because the US wants it to. In that sense, it's currently winning/won. The size of the US military and economy (and it's close allies) are largely what enforces that world order.
Personally, I think it's better than the old model of imperialism (it's certainly way less violent and has rapidly increased living standards across the globe). But it's still a case of the big powerful countries enforcing their will on smaller countries.
The past few years have seem drastically reduced US Naval spending, particularly on the protection of commercial shipping (the shipping and military news sites are almost ready to agree that the US Navy has abandoned this part of the mission entirely). Under Obama's administration we balked at protecting the commercial fishing rights of our allies in the Philippines and it's expected that this kind of policy in reaction to Chinese aggression in SEA will continue.
Then COVID hit us and we might actually see a real unravelling or the last 60 years of global economic policy.
This means that we should probably expect more conflict rather than less.
I was almost-directly quoting the co-founder of Anduril.
Because of the Monroe Doctrine [1], which has been applied in some form or another for the past couple of hundred years.
That’s only part of the equation - said country needs to have a desire or need to go to war as well.
Huge power imbalance between USA (sole holder of all nuclear arms), and the rest of the world.
So ... yeah, kinda proves your point.
Developed/stolen.
Hippies were the children of WW2 vets and were an entire generation who seemingly failed to understand that the world they lived in was forged at great personal cost by the previous generation and the anvil upon which it was forged was The Great Depression and WW2. The Hippie antiwar stance was like the collective voice of the subconscious of the previous generation that was deeply scarred by WW2 and wanted to just fight no more forever.
Have a good day.
Have a good day, too, stranger.
It is my understanding that Shaolin priests believe "A man of peace must be strong" and both willing and able to defend his views in a fight to the death.
I hope you get some sleep. Stay hydrated.
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I feel like you've put many words into their mouth that may not have been there. It's perfectly reasonable to acknowledge that the current world order was built on the back of centuries (millennia, really) of aggression and violence, while still wishing it did not have to be that way -- or at least hoping the future could hold something better. I don't think that's naive, as long as we continue to make choices that recognize the actual state of the world, while still holding our hopes dear.
I, too, would not feel ok starting a company whose sole or primary purpose was to build for the military. Fortunately we live in a world where many, many people can choose not to fuel the military industrial complex without damaging our countries' preparedness for the wars they might need to fight, as there will always be others who ok with this line of work.
I don't know what this is supposed to even mean. Do you mean "it's a shame to live in a world where defence is necessary" or "it's a shame to live in a world where aggressors face defence"?
We live in dangerous times, with multiple situations that can devolve into all-out wars very VERY quickly, and as Ukraine has shown it is extremely wise to prepare:
- obviously, everyone with a border to Russia has to fear invading orcs. Moldavia and the Baltic nations are at particular threat, given the speeches by Russian officials and think-tank representatives that suggest Russia wants to build back its Russian Empire glory days. Additionally, everyone is at threat from Russian cyber actors and Russian-backed separatist and far-right organizations.
- China has not only the Taiwan question, but also ongoing border skirmishes with India and resource-grabbing operations in the entire Pacific - hell they have been caught illegally fishing in waters as far away as Africa [1]. The risk of Chinese cyber attacks is just as high as Russia, although China seems to focus more on industrial espionage for now.
- The entire situation around Israel and Iran is highly volatile. Israel routinely strikes against targets both in Iran and Syria, and at least for the latter Putin has pretty much clarified that they won't keep looking away for much longer. And everyone in the region is worried about Iran, to the tune that it's likely that the idea of a "middle Eastern NATO" is already reality in secret.
- Almost all of Africa is under threat from internal conflict, both ongoing and future. Dictatorships of various kinds, border fights, civil wars, religious wars - name your idea of conflict cause and you will find it in Africa somewhere. Add to that economic insecurity and pressure from the effects of climate change, and the entire continent is an explosion just waiting to happen. The US doesn't have to take care much, but Europe will have to deal with a lot of refugees sooner or later (and to make it worse, we still haven't decided on how to deal with refugees in a way that doesn't threaten to destabilize our interior politics and complies with the ideals laid down in various international treaties).
- Half of South America is a similar bomb waiting to explode. Failed states (Venezuela), narco states (Mexico), states collapsing to gang warfare (Haiti), and the open possibility that it might need world-wide military intervention to stop Brazil from burning down the Amazon rainforest.
[1] https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/gambia-chinas-trawler-fischen...
The US spends almost double as much money per citizen as countries as Germany, and yet, the quality of healthcare and accessibility are so much better here than the horror stories that regularly pop up here or on Reddit. Not to say our system is perfect - it's far from what I would consider to be decent - but the objective measurements of how the US' health care system performs are speaking clear and loud [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...
[2] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2...
Yes, the grandparent mentioned health care, but there's a lot more that's possible. And hell, even if no one fixed the health care system in the US such that spending could go down to reasonable levels, I'd still imagine we could have free -- if expensive -- health care for all if we didn't have to allocate so much money to the military.
But that's not the world we live in; military preparedness is an absolute necessity.
Local specialized custom hr/tax/legal/retail/city software is always popular, as it is region specific and constantly changing. ;)
It was absolutely fascinating. I highly recommend giving it a listen, even to people who think they aren't interested in war history.
With "Anduril," are you referring to Toykeeper's (technically deprecated) LED driver (flashlight, torch) interface? If not, then what? If so, then please give me some idea how a flashlight interface may be employed in national defense. Thanks.
Can we please not do this sort of thing here?!? HN has mods, and I'm sure everyone would appreciate if you didn't try to do their jobs for them. Thank you.
> but a quick web search for "anduril defense" or "anduril company"
OP gave no hint that it was a company or had anything to do with defense, and was talking about innovation. I'm not going to defend my ignorance, but I'm also not going to apologize for asking for clarification, not will I change my posting behavior based on your irrational sensibilities. Try to be a little tougher next time and not get so bent out of shape by an innocent question.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
For the most part there is no more low hanging fruit like you would see in movies like 'War dogs' etc... simply because Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budgets are basically gone, and that's where a lot of the fast money was.
Now, you need to know what you're doing because you're competing with the companies that survived the last few decades and live off of these smaller SBIR/STTR/OTA funding lines
To be clear this is not what Palantir and Anduril do. Both groups have professional and skilled proposal writers and very deep technical policy expertise when it comes to winning (and defending and contesting) awards and doing it in a way that will ensure that their products can get an Authority to Operate and actually work
In-Q-Tel is the VC arm of the CIA. I've never directly done a deal with them but the employees I've met seem really nice and helpful
Few thoughts:
- Focus on your hobbies and other industries you know well. What problems exist? Where can you make things better? Are there problems people mention over and over again?
- CAD modeling is often THE fundamental skill needed for people to bring their ideas to market. You can make CAD models that look almost real using software you can get for free. This allows you to work backwards, first determining if there's a market, and also working out many of the design flaws before making something
If you're just excited to make stuff, and want to get your hands on something, you can do all kinds of things in a tight space.
- 3D printers are small and provide many automated opportunities - Laser cutters are dead simple to set up and use to make real products and are easy to automate. - CNC machines can be had for under 5k and are super powerful - Portable MIG welders have a small footprint and welding tends to be in high demand - Leather working tends to be high perceived value though automation is limited - Soldering and electronics repair requires little space but again, automation is limited
I've got loads of other ideas too but I'm guessing that's good for now. My contact information is in my profile if you'd like to talk more.
Are there any other projects similar to this, making normally-expensive pieces of equipment approachable for hobbyists?
I second the MPCNC recommendation. Though if your goal is production and not tinkering with a CNC machine, it may not be the best fit.
I could have handled the whole operation in a spare bedroom if I didn't have a garage, and there are plenty of areas where I could have dropped the time required or the cost. I never bought the turf in bulk and I used household scissors to cut from a template so buying a roll and cutting with something more effective may have netted me more. Niche leisure products in spend-y verticals typically do well.
He lived near a town where a mine had shut down a few years earlier. Him and his buddy went out and found a ton of heavy duty, industrial conveyor belts. They took as much as their two trucks could haul. Went back and cut them into lengths suitable for truck beds. Sold them at $100 a pop for any truck. Same thing. They'd just told the customer to measure their bed and they'd cut them to fit.
Not sure how much they made, but the rubber was like an inch thick, heavy enough to stay in place without any glue or tie downs and the rubber was really grippy on the one side. It was prefect for what they did with it. You could put a tool box smack in the middle of the bed it wouldn't move an inch on that rubber.
I've always wondered if you could do something similar with wholesale conveyor mats these days or if this was just a "right place, right time" kind of a deal for my friend.
On my way to the rust belt with a hackszall right now.
I sold about 70 through the forums, 300 from word of mouth, and another 250 on eBay. They make 90's-era skis really lean into that Dixie-cup aesthetic and they work surprisingly well, so a customer's buddy or dock neighbor would ask and I'd catch a referral that way. I think I priced them just right too.
Because the turf is a highly-textured surface, there's far less tendency for your feet to slip in any direction when the mat is waterlogged and/or during high lateral-g maneuvering, while still retaining the "self-cleaning" characteristics of the foam rubber. The backing surface of the turf is very similar to the original rubber, just arranged in a square cell pattern. Slap some contact cement in the footwells and you've got a replacement that (IMO) exceeds the traction of the OEM mats and looks 100x cooler. I've been running them on my ski for two years now and have yet to see a blade come off after a ride, no matter how hard I push it.
* Basic blacksmithing (small furnace & anvil)
* Woodwork using power tools & manual tools (table saw, miter saw, router table, band saw, planer, etc)
* Metal working
* Ceramics casting
* Jewelry making
* 3D printing (resin and reel)
* Laser cutting (48 x 24)
* Vacuum forming
* Robotics
* Paint spraying (just bought a five stage paint blower)
* CNC (small format, would like to add a 5-axis eventually)
* Shoot build videos
* Electronics design & diagnostics (just finished my new ESD workbench with component storage)
* Laundry
* Mini-CostCo with freezer section
What I cannot do in my garage:
* Park a car
* Find enough time to do what I want
Screen printing is a pretty easy business to do out of a garage - you can either print and sell your own designs or print for others. Unless there are already a lot of screen printers in your area odds are there are businesses and organizations that would love to make some cheap swag with their logos. I haven't checked but I have to imagine there's a "xometry for screen printing" service out there that you could probably get semi-consistent work from.
Honestly though, so long as you don't need to quit your day job today, you can probably find some good deals on some used cnc equipment that will let you make anything while staying in your current price range. The difficulty is not in determining what's possible but rather what's profitable. Most garage manufacturing companies tend to make some incredibly niche thing like a bracket that allows you to stick a camera on a particular item used for a particular hobby; stuff that anyone could make but no big companies care enough to develop. Most of the time these are tinkerers who make lots of little widgets to solve their own problems and one of them eventually takes off.
If your goal is just to make money, I would suggest selling products that can be made by some service like xometry until you stumble across something that's popular, then you can bring manufacturing in house to increase your margins.
If you troll Etsy or eBay or places like that, you'll quickly begin to realize the quantity of things that are obviously made on a CNC milling machine, or a laser cutter, etc.
The customizability can be the selling point - and if you can fit everything on a trailer, you can even haul it to state fairs, town fun fests, etc.
Think those fancy wood name plates you can buy at Disneyland kind of thing. But the big advantage can be you are local instead of some online thing.
The problem with the space isn't really the capital but noise abatement, waste disposal, and inventory. The ideal product would be quiet to make, not use tough chemicals to dispose, and materials you can buy in bulk and small enough not to take up a ton of space in the worksite.
Of course it also benefits remote tech workers who have an LLC or whatever. And handymen, et c.
The key is to fly under the radar and not cause problems.
I've seen some large HOAs that cover lots of homes where they provide free or discounted community services, like a gym, pool, tennis courts, etc. But it seems silly to structure that as a HOA rather than some sort of voluntary community organization. Or just do it more traditionally and charge membership or use fees to use the amenities. If that's not financially feasible, then perhaps there aren't enough people who actually want them, and so maybe they shouldn't exist.
And I get that many homeowners want to control their neighbors in order to keep the neighborhood frozen in some particular state, but it's... pretty gross. I hear the line "protecting home values" trotted out all the time, but that just feels like an excuse for busybodies who want to control others' lives. Things like not allowing a garage-based business that produces lots of noise and pollution should just be covered by regular zoning laws.
I assume they intend to narrow down ideas based on their specific situation.
Nobody is checking what's going on in garages and basements in Detroit and the police in that kind of place would laugh off a call like that. Not having snooty busybody neighbors (an impossibility in most of the "nice neighborhoods" and "good school districts" that HNers generally buy into) seems to matter more than legality in practice. Nobody else cares if you're legal as long as you're reasonable.
"The following occupations are eligible for a Home Occupation Permit subject to restrictions discussed in the next section. If the occupation is followed by an asterisk, the use is also subject to special conditions also discussed below. Eligible home occupations are:
1. General office uses, such as accountant, administrative assistant, answering service, appraiser, architect, attorney, bookkeeper, broker or agent (real estate, insurance, etc.), counselor, consultant, drafting service, engineer, interior decorator, secretarial service, word processing service, and other office uses whose characteristics are substantially similar to those listed.
2. Commission merchant, direct sale product distribution, internet, or mail order business.
3. Dressmaker, tailor, fashion designer.
4. Mobile vehicle glass installation and mobile vehicle detailing.*
5. Pet services, such as pet sitting, pet grooming, pet training, and veterinarian care.*
6. Office for contractor, handyperson, janitorial service, landscape contractor, gardening service.*
7. Artist.
8. Tutoring.*
9. Small equipment, appliance, and computer assembly, repair, or reconstruction.*
10. Healing arts professional, including physician, surgeon, chiropractor, physical therapist, acupuncturist, and somatic practitioner.*
11. Hair stylist, barber, and manicurist.
12. Swimming instructor.*
13. Cottage food operation as defined in section 113758 of the California Health and Safety Code."
=================
I saw somebody get dinged for this once for running a Twitch stream out of their garage and accepting donations, one of the only times I've seen the modern "contractor" trend work out in anyone's favor:
[0] https://casetext.com/statute/california-codes/california-hea...
I'd love to move to a more "robust" process, but options for materials and widespread access to 3d printing provides a lot of versatility for a single-person business where I want to control the entire product and process end-to-end.
Just need to find your niche.
I wanted the product and knew others in the industry would too. Once I was able to get it in the hands of a few operators to see and use, it started selling "organically" through word of mouth.
helps if you have breadth of knowledge and experience in a variety of fields also. interdisciplinary solutions still have plenty of untapped market potential
other than that there is no magic formula that i know of. its kind of one of those "if you have to ask..." type things.
For example, hang out at small-town airports or boat harbors, or with lawyers and doctors. If you can find some small part that would help them use their boat, then $300-500 for it might not even be an extreme price especially if they see you using it first.
(This is not an argument to go buy a boat and plane).
For example, I designed a set of sprockets to drive my blinds, and the total weight of the sprockets to drive 3 sets of blinds is less than 15 grams of plastic. This goose-shaped figurine is about 35g of plastic: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3906053
For something that costs me $0.17 at home, Etsy people want to charge upwards of $4 plus shipping and Shapeways or the like are $20+.
Imagine you had a bunch of arcade machines with a proprietary button to turn each on. You can buy the button, but the manufacturer requires their service people physically install and bind it your arcade. Most operators want multiple buttons cause they always break, but they also don't want to deal with downtime during replacement.
I sell the button for 1/3 of the cost with modifications allowing anyone to install it.
For me, reverse engineering it was easy, the most difficult part was/is sourcing electronics with custom specs.
For a guitar, however... possibly having the body made of wood like a real electric guitar could be a selling point.
I always have ideas for little products (some involve electronics others not) I'd like to build, but how to go from raw idea in my head to working assembly, I'm lost on: choosing motors, control board, mechanical reliability, etc. Maybe I just need to read some ME books, but if they are like math and physics texts, there is gulf between the text how to do build something practical.
Recently I had a small project idea that involved a pretty basic PCB. I was surprised at how easy it was to teach myself board layout (using KiCAD) and several related skills. You can get one(ish)-off PCBs manufactured by PCBWay or OSH Park on the cheap. I haven't finished the project yet (supply chain issues), but I'm pretty sure it'll be successful, and fairly cheap, considering.
There are lots of resources online if you need more external help learning. Two I was pointed to (but haven't really dug into too deeply yet) are All About Circuits (https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/) and Ultimate Electronics (https://ultimateelectronicsbook.com/). For the more physical aspects, YouTube has been a great resource -- for example I needed to solder a 5mm x 5mm QFN IC to a breakout board, and didn't want to spend the money on a high-end rework station. A random video on YouTube taught me how to do it with some flux, solder paste, and a cheap hot air gun I bought on Amazon.
Next I'm going to look into getting a 3D printer, and learn how to design stuff for that. I expect the learning curve there will be higher (at least for me), but I don't see it as out of reach.
I'm in the high power rocketry hobby and a 3d printer was a game changer for me. I have a prusa i3 mk3s+ and can't recommend it enough. For software i originally started with onshape but then went to Fusion360 because that's what everyone else in the hobby uses. Learning curve is steep but there's tons and tons of good material to help you learn. My workflow is Fusion360 then PrusaSlicer then save to sdcard then print. You can really optimize further but i don't sell 3d printed parts so it's good for me.
On the other hand, i do have a big arse laser and i stood up a little website and sell a simple cutting service to my buddies in the rocketry hobby. I like my website, i have no database! I actually use some metadata features of the stripe api for my order database hah.
I have since gotten into 3d printing and have printed molds and poured silicone with good luck. Some of that silicone has been the final part, some were then used as molds for pouring resin in. I've even added glass fiber to some of that resin before pouring to make some pretty sturdy parts.
Maybe some of the parts you are 3d printing now could be done with resin? Bondo makes a product with glass fiber in it, but most of the parts I'm doing are fairly small, and the bondo has long fibers in it, when I make my own fibers, I just cut fiberglass and can make it whatever length fiber I want.
I have looked at SLA printing and "bench/desktop" injections molding setups like MicroMolder, but I've ruled those out cause I don't have enough ventilation or appropriate space for handling resin -- I don't actually do this in a garage, but a spare room.
That fiber reinforced Bondo is some pretty nasty stuff in the fume dept. If you really wanted to go that direction you could vent out a window or use some active carbon filtration I presume. But it starts adding up, depending on the quality you need you might also need a pressure/vacuum vessel as well and a pump.
I've managed without, for my micro volume of personal stuff I do.
If it were me, I'd also be looking at scenarios that involve any kind of "thing" that I could acquire cheaply and re-purpose somehow. Making lamps out of old wine bottles, that sort of thing.
Robots, unmanned vehicles of various sorts, all sorts of small electronic gadgets, probably some auto accessories... really, the range of things you could (at least hypothetically) manufacture in a space that size is huge.
Now whether or not you could manufacture the thing at scale may be a different question. You could probably easily accommodate doing something the size of a small home appliance (think: washing machine size) if you only had to do one at a time. But doing that at scale might well require more space. So is the intent to stay in the garage and run an enduring business there, or just to ship a prototype, prove the model, and then maybe expand? Or is this purely an academic thought experiment?
The Buster Beagle was a real game changer in this space, though if your parts are really small there are other even cheaper options.
The goal is to, as you say, prove the prototype and then get a larger dedicated space. The product I have is not super niche and could theoretically grow a lot, but we are planning to be pretty adaptable by focusing a lot on COTS components, the kind that you can go onto Alibaba and find 5 factories for whatever you need.
Print shop type things, especially specialized like vinyl cutting and large banners, could be a good business depending on where you're at. Might be able to buy used or lease equipment too.
Woodworking / furniture shop and / or antique furniture restoration might not be terribly capital intensive.
Just a 3d printer, some custom cut metal pieces, the actual electronic components and some soldering irons. [0]
Don't be the solution searching for a problem!
You take stock of your skills, hit the job boards, ...
First, the ask is to help find things that can make money in the garage. I think that would be like finding ‘problems’ then applying a ‘location:garage’ filter to narrow the choices down.
Then, after choosing the product, it’s to tool the garage to manufacture the ‘solution’
the problem is "convince partner that I need a sweet shop in the garage", solution is "become entrepreneur requiring sweet shop in garage" ;)
I'd add that it's something that you want to manufacture for which there are buyers, otherwise the inventory won't go anywhere and they'll waste their investment.
> ...not particularly interested in the legality of this...
And potentially legal, depending on locale.
I get better product now than I used to. Mostly it’s about genetics anyway.
The number one bit of advice I give to new gardeners (my garden is pretty well developed) is ‘less is more’. Basically leave the plant alone as much as you can. Water deeply instead of frequently and use many seeds to start with whittling down to the best genetics.
For example for my 5 pumpkin plants I planted around 50 seeds from last year. Waited a couple weeks and then pulled the smaller plants. Do the same again a couple weeks later. Then when transplanting cull once more. Plant three in every hole. Two weeks later cull until there’s one plant in each spot.
Then for advanced mode you use the seeds from this selection process next year, and they get more and more adapted to your micro climate.
>> for my 5 pumpkin plants
Is this some sort of code-speak, or marijuana variety, or are they really just talking about pumpkins?
I deffo could have made that more clear though!!
There will always be new customers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyXSNzywqvw
The only problem with living things though is then you have to care for them. Even if you don't feel like it that day. And if they don't sell you still have to water them or throw them out.
There are people who breed specialty plants also and make a (modest) living from their backyard. I know a retired guy who does this and sells his developed cultivars (ships once a year) on Facebook marketplace. He does like 20-30K in sales a year from his yard but it took him years of growing to start developing the cultivars.
Not spreading plant diseases around ends up being a big deal.
However, the inspection and license is not very hard or expensive.
(My dad grows and sells seedlings of a particular and somewhat obscure native fruit as a side business.)
He's got a pretty significant amount of capability -- "CNC mills, laser cutters, lathes, paints, electronics, work tables, and, of course, multiple 3D printers" -- built into a space that looks closer to a 1-car garage than a 2-car garage.
edit: here's the actual link https://youtu.be/hsCSTO8SaQU
He's got the tall ceiling, yeah, but he wasn't using it in any way that I can see.
Power hookups likely wouldn't be an obstacle if one was recreating this in a residential garage. Would just need 220V for some of the machines I bet. Key here is that for Grant's line he surely you running all of the power-hungry machines at once as he was (to the best of my knowledge) working on bespoke one-off projects.
Edit: just re-read the OP, they do mention 2-car specifically actually
(context: I live in the american quintessential "suburbs", cul-de-sac and all.)
Around my parts, garages are ironically barely, if EVER, used for the cars! Something that surprised us when we moved here. Many houses around here are good examples of american excess; I've seen a couple houses with like between 4-6 cars(!) and all of them are just parked in the driveway (remember with all that space we also have room for like 6-8 cars in a driveway parked 2-by-2 behind each other). People just park all ("all" lol) their cars in the driveway, and then the garage is used for any number of things: - "shops" for wood/metalworking, or crafts - table/chairs for those "garage startups" - giant freezers for meats/breads/etc for larger families - massive amounts of STUFF -- I've seen way too many garages here that are just filled with hoarder-levels of STUFF. It's disturbing.
Personally, our garage is a 2-car garage, and we put our 1 car in there, and I use the rest for my little hobbyist carpentry area. Not enough space for a full workshop, but when I need more room I pull the car out to the driveway for a bit, then put things away and pull the car back in when I'm finished. That works well enough for me for now.
American suburbs are a bizarre place for sure. Hope that clears some stuff up!
Maybe with more people and more capital this could be scaled to something that can be sold, like replicas of classic CPUs.
Lathe, CNC Mill, Drill Press, Bandsaw, Bend Brake, CNC laser/plasma cutter. That'd be the basics of a fully featured metal shop. Buying used and upgrading as you bring in some revenue would keep you under your price target.
A quick look around https://puzzleparadise.net/ will reveal many people willing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for bespoke homemade sequential discovery puzzles made with laser cutting, woodworking, 3D printing, CNC, mill, lathe, custom PCBs, etc.
To go further down the rabbit hole see: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1j5V0nECn9hqUCmPmxPqi...
Probably one of the busiest establishments in the area from what I could tell.
So the retail side is probably pretty solid right now too.
You'll never outcompete a large market, but for people making < 1000 of a thing, there's not a lot of options.
This seems like the sort of work that was spun off from some kind of existing business relationship.
I'm really into analog photography and I can think of several products that people (including myself) would pay for but that it's just not economically feasible for a big company to hire a bunch of people and pay them wages, health insurance, and 401ks to make, on top of the actual cost of the product. I'm looking to gradually put together a workshop to try and make some of them, and if I do them, I might as well sell them. Even if it's $100 out the door for a $5 piece of metal, there's actually a market for that in terms of hobby income, it's just not a market that will sustain full-time employees and mass production.
Between 3d printing, stamping, a CNC mill and lathe, casting, a laser cutter, and a vacuum oven, you can really do a tremendous amount of stuff in your garage, especially if you are willing to leverage these tools together. 3D print a part and then cast it in a durable metal, machine it to clean it up. CNC mill yourself a stamping die. Use the vacuum oven to cure things, or dehydrate your filament, etc. Like on paper that's pretty much a tool-and-die shop, given sufficient effort you can make things that will let you make whatever else you want - much like chemistry you're never more than a couple tools away from the thing you want, you just have to make the thing that will let you make the thing you want.
Optical lithography is not that hard either as long as you're not working at semiconductor scale. There's that kid that is making chips in his garage over in the UK or something. But you can use that as a manufacturing technique for other stuff. Or use resist etching like for PCBs.
In a lot of cases, really the only limit is when you bump into something that's restricted or too hazardous to keep around even if it's unrestricted. Like boy, mercury intensifier works great but... I like my nervous system the way it is. Even selenium intensifier or pyrocat developer are pretty yikes in terms of the MSDS, very much a "better have a fume hood" thing, or do it outside (in a daylight tank).
Incidentally, but, my most insane "I'd love to do that in my garage" is custom lenses. I know the accuracy is probably just not there compared to what you'd realistically need for good results, but it really seems like single-point diamond turning should be something that is achievable with a high-end setup (say $25k) in this era of solid CNC mill or lathe setups for half that price. Maybe it's something you could build out of a CNC setup but again, is it accurate enough to make it worth it (not sure of the tolerances required, at least 1/1000th, probably 1/10,000 is better, 1/100k or finer should do it, which I guess isn't too far out of what you can do with a lathe, it's all just end work and you have to be precisely optically centered and aligned). Coating is one where you'd need the vacuum oven for sure, assuming it wasn't too toxic (iirc coatings are fluoride based). Growing optics-grade fluorite or calcite crystals also might be possible for lens blanks (although again, maybe too nasty) - or glass casting too. You'd need an optical bench too of course.
There is definitely a market for that I think - all-fluorite lenses are excellent for wide-spectrum photography (UV to IR in the same lens without focus shift - see the Coastal Optics lenses f.ex) and people (companies) pay big bucks for those, like $50k is entry-level for something in that class if you go out and buy it new. And with single-point you can make aspheric lenses as easily as spheric, so you could do all-aspheric designs that aren't commercially viable for mass-market lenses... as well as super-high-quality repros of classic lenses that are obscure or just classics. People would pay for a neo-retro Hypergon or modern takes on sonnar/heliar/etc if you could produce good results. Or you could make tools that let you do it in the traditional fashion with spheric surfaces.
http://www.savazzi.net/photography/coastalopt_60.html
https://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/nikon/nikkor...
http://www.company7.com/nikon/lens/0105f4.5uv.html
https://jmcscientificconsulting.com/testing/asahi-pentax-ult...
Anyway though another place where some of this ends is "too difficult to make at home"... that's actually a more interesting question in some ways, a dedicated hobbyist with tool-and-diemaker level machinist skills fluency with modern CNC and 3D printing and the techniques enabled by that, and enough knowledge of chemistry/optical/electrical/RF to get yourself in trouble, can of course make an enormous amount of stuff. But things like single-crystal turbine blades for micro-turbine designs are difficult and without the "real deal" you are leaving performance on the table. In some cases (again, things that are too toxic to handle, or illegal) you do basically hit a wall, not all projects scale down to the hobbyist level.
Bikepacking bags (and to some extent ultra-light hiking) are good examples that come to mind where people started things as hobby businesses in their garage and they quickly expanded because of demand.
A trivial electronic gadget to turn an oil cooler pump on and off is a good start. Electronic assembly isn't noisy or stinky. At most you might need to bend sheet metal for a case.
Guitar players love audio processing gadgets they can turn on and off with their toes. Make something that can be adjusted to give them a unique sound. Distortion is easy to layer on.
The margins are really high.
Saying this because I recently discovered it, and like it, because it's basically garlic without the 'stink', useful for spicing up many things, again without the stink. Hard to describe. Anyways, it's seen as a gourmet thing. So one maybe could make some money with it, without much volume. OTOH energy isn't getting cheaper. Dunno. See and search for yourself.
There might be an opportunity there.
Someone is basically doing that for keyboards, though they mainly rebox/ship from China.
One idea I had was bicycle frames, if you know arc welding. Custom size frames or of unique design go for a lot. I guess it depends on how fiddly they get, but if you can bang out the standard fittings then the main part should be quite quick to put togther.
Ask in nearby townhalls if they would like some souvenirs for visiting important guests, some commemorative stuff for various contests.
Ask local hardware shop owners if they have ideas for custom brackets or some parts that could be easily machined but are unreasonably expensive.
Ask nearby sawmill owner if they need anything machined, typically they have requests from clients for some simple parts but don't have resources to have own people manning cnc's. Typically they will have requests for wooden or metal ornaments or curved parts of wooden windows, maybe artistic cabinet doors or house doors.
Wooden and metal signs for various shops.
Might or might not be legal. The disadvantage is you can only make one, but the advantage is recurring revenue once you've made it.
I personally refurbish electronics. It's nice and quiet.
His collars aren’t just leather bells. He adds engraving, GPS, jewels and vegan options. it’s crazy how much people are willing to spend on their pets.
If you want to see what something like this could look like, Aaron Parecki designed a very clever stand for a video device called an ATEM Mini, and started with one-off 3d prototypes he was printing. He validated the idea, then sourced up to a small -- just a bit bigger than a garage -- "factory" that would be like what you're describing.
Here is a tour of the "factory" https://youtu.be/ljaEnoJZ8OY?t=1071
Might help you source ideas by looking at what some creators are prototyping on their channels, then pitching a small scale factory run of the devices.
It doesn't take much space and I do it out of my small European town house basement. Which also serves as my photo lab for demonstrations.
Never really thought about that but can you get larger "flashlight" style UV-spectrum LEDs from cree/etc? Of course you need to diffuse it and fewer larger elements are harder than more smaller elements but the output power is probably higher with the big LEDs, and I seem to remember some of the alt-processes are quite insensitive (like, leave it outside in the sun for a half hour).
The other way you can do it is, of course, printing a big negative and contact printing outside. It's a little lame with film since you have to go through an interpositive to get back to a negative (unless you use positive B+W slide process or similar - but those processes aren't great either in terms of quality), but ironically those processes are now extremely accessible through digital or hybrid-digital workflows. Scan your negative, print the scan (still negative) onto a transparency, and contact print, done. Or you can take a random digital image and invert it and then print it onto a transparency.
I should give laser-transparency cyanotype a go one of these days, that would be a few fun afternoons.
On the "how do I put out enough UV light for cyanotype enlargment" thing, I wonder if there's a way to get flashbulbs to put out UV light. One of the reasons older flash photos don't have the modern digital "flash" look is because the whole flashbulb lights up, and then the reflector actually spreads out the light from the flashbulb, so you don't have a point source like the xenon tube, it's a highly diffused source. And it's actually relatively intense by modern standards - another weird niche where flashbulb still is viable is infrared photography, IR flashbulbs put out a pretty massive amount of light.
If you want a HUGE UVA bank, look at Wild Fire. They make UV LEDs for party places, like cosmic bowling nights, and such. One of those could likely be easily adapted to your purpose, though it might be a little pricey.
Most people who do cyanotype print digital negatives with an inkjet printer as it has long been said that enlarging was not possible. Laser transparencies are too low in resolution to give good results.
The advantage of digital negatives is that you can adjust the contrast curve to match the response curve of cyanotype to get the best contrast, since it's different from that of silver.
But an all analog workflow is nice too.
e.g. find a sport or hobby that requires tools/components that can be manufactured in your 2-car/2 person setting. Then give them customization or very high quality. CNC is basically commodity now, as are 3D prints - you need something outside that box I think, or at least have it only be a component of what you are doing.
Obviously - illegal stuff.
Anything bigger than about 8 foot in length, or more than 1000kg in mass. If you can pick it up solo, you might be able to build it.
Machining wise, you can buy tools to measure down to a micron, and harbor freight has stuff to get you to 25 microns. Used machine tools are widely available.
Integrated circuits are outside your time and dollar budget. But Sam Zeloof could give you pointers.
It's an amazing time to be a maker!
You can grow gourmet or medicinal mushrooms with a handmade flow hood, a pressure cooker and two grow tents.
And the next major hurdle is actually selling product to stores. Good luck getting into real grocery stores, if you don't have a relationship with them or some kind of major in they won't even give you the time of day. You'd have to start small and super local, like an indie grocer that is willing to take a chance (and almost certainly have you take on 100%+ of the risk and pay to take back any unsold product).
I've listened to some folks on cooking podcasts that tried successfully (and unsuccessfully) to get into selling their own sauces, condiments, etc. and it is a hell of a difficult journey. They all spent easily six figures of their own cash to get it all bootstrapped and off the ground too. I don't think a single one ended up being happy in the end or felt like it was worth the trouble.
I'm fortunate to have a sister in the food retailing business who was our first customer. We started dehydrating lime slices to use up the excess limes from our yard and control fruit fly, and found we couldn't keep up with demand. From there it's gone really well.
We are in Australia though, YMMV.
I need to do something like this (I'm in Fiji). Do you happen to have any pics or videos showing your dehydrator and prep room? I assume you used Reefer containers.
BTW what does dehydrating limes have to do with fruit fly control?
Fallen fruit can be a reservoir for fruit fly, so I'm forever picking up fruit to bury it in compost so fruit fly can't get to it, or grow in it. By removing fallen fruit I'm not keeping fruit fly around to get into my orchard and ruin 50-70k of fruit. It's only a little orchard but we value add it by dehydration and add 75% margin on top. It adds up!
Even without an outbreak, there are restrictions on buying fruit and taking it into a particular agricultural zone. Heavy fines for bringing fruit over the state border (my mother copped a $300 fine for forgetting she had mandarins in the car boot on a roadtrip).
Any licensing requirements for dehydrated citrus?
- push for the West to help Ukraine more. More weapons and faster delivery. So call your senator, raise awareness, etc;
It's a chaos: so many people working on these drones and exploring different approaches. Right now my group is trying to figure out: 1) long range digital link with at least 115,200 baud rate given directional antennae on both sides and 2) different approach re manufacturing of actual planes. So many options ranging from styrofoam to carbon, all with different price tags and availability... chaos.
Anyway, emailing you now.
Can beat a lake-cabin, especially for people who live near lots of connected lakes.
What they do is fairly simple and doesn't need CAD experience or the use of CNC machines/3D printers. The key thing is to make a good quality product, offer good customer service and work to get word of mouth advertising.
People with hobbies and disposable income are a good market to target.
The key skillset required is the ability to weld (for aluminium boats) and a garage set up to hold up boats while they're being assembled or customized.
The ones that (almost) everyone I know have break frequently. They would be easy to make out of stainless with a couple small jigs.
https://cheetahfactoryracing.com/products/board-ski-bracket-...
The market is probably pretty small, but I'd definitely buy two sets ;)
[0] tube is measured by the outer diameter; pipe is measured by the inner diameter
Are you in the US? If you're trying to buy those tubes, are you trying to order very long lengths? UPS apparently has a limit of 108" total length, and a sum of 165" for length + "girth".
As for McMaster overall - I agree with some other sentiments here that they're great, though I do admit the "McMaster tax" (paying 10~200% what you could find the identical part somewhere else for) can be annoying at times, but is worth it when you want a reliable supplier with almost universally good quality products.
edit: Based on your reply to a sibling comment, I looked around, and found this thread that seems to reinforce your experience that McMaster shipping to Canada is...unreliable: https://www.chiefdelphi.com/t/mcmaster-carr-supplying-to-int...
I would try the recommendation there of ensuring you have a business name on the order, or, contact their support - I've had to contact them a couple times and they were generally quite helpful.
Good luck.
Hi xxxx,
We only ship to large businesses and schools in Canada. We can't accept your order. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. You might want to try Fastenal or Motion Canada.
Lauren
If that's a problem to them, I'm guessing they don't have a fully automated solution to that like e.g. DigiKey does.
I'm not sure if this is a super variable experience or if it has changed over time (I first ordered from them in 2020).
https://www.aircraftspruce.ca/
I've built a bike frame with their 4130 tubes.
"Due to the cost and complexity of shipping our products to Canada, we are only able to accept orders from businesses and schools. We’ve canceled your order. If this material is not for personal use, please resubmit your order online using the business or school name."
After that, I added my company's legal name to both shipping and billing address, put "Please note: this order is for business" in order comments the first couple times, and had no problems since.
I wish we had something similar in Canada that has a good selection and isn't a pain to deal with, but as it stands, McMaster is too good to give up on.
ETA: Having read your other comment, it appears they might have restricted their policy since then, but grandfathered existing clients. That would be really sad for Canadians.
https://www.cyclingabout.com/heaviest-touring-bike-ever-behe...
(I met this guy in Cambridge Mass in the 80's).
I remember this from the 80’s too, I was 8 when I met him and it was the coolest thing ever.
Things could still be made smaller if there were more antennae nearby: hence lower transmit power. But I think the smartphone format is pretty dang near perfect.
I think that steer is something easily replaceable. I want to do lowriders - when the lowest point of butt is lower than a line between two axles. This is an incredible fast form-factor for totally good roads. Thanks HN for a discussion.
But at this point carbon fiber is pretty easy to manufacture. For a bike frame the hard part would be design optimization and stress calculations. It might even be easier once you have the molds. I'm not really sure I understand why some upstart carbon bike company hasn't cleaned up given how inexpensively some of the no-name carbon parts from china are (and how they appear to be at least as good if not better than some of the name brand stuff in some cases).
The thing I got stuck on was inventory. You need to have raw materials (either buying in bulk or buying bulk when you get a good deal) and unless you're MTO, you're keeping inventory. That fills up space and ties up your cash. Not a fun daydream after that point.
For the adventure seekers among us who like to prototype their own gear I found the link: https://youtu.be/Ne2J01h1tZ0
I have 3 car garage, with one car in it, the rest is workshop. That fits ample tracking, several metalworking machines, bench space and tool storage. I don't run a full fledged business, just hobby jobs, but it could easily support as much.
I've seen clean rooms, home built automated manufacturing rigs and labs I'd wish for at work, all in people's sheds. I truly believe a small workshop can do wonders. The capabilities of small modern equipment, and the ability to outsource jobs/parts by email only makes this easier.
(edit: formatting)
there's lots of tutorials on youtube, seems like a gratifying hobby with a potential for profit if you take it seriously as a day job
Counterfeit board games.
It'd be easier to list what you can't manufacture in a 2 car garage.
It is surprising how much you have to know to make gears to be used in mechanical power transmission. It's not magic, and definitely doable, but you can't just cut them out out of sheet stock on a CNC router and expect them to work for years.
There have been a few pop up, seemingly sell really well, then disappear for unknown reasons. I think Weber was the last one, and they became highly sought after.
Charge 150 bucks a pop, people will buy it.
Build unfinished receivers for firearms. Might not stay legal much longer though.
Have a look at 3dhubs. (www.hubs.com)
Your house is very likely in a residential zone, which limits it to residential use only (some exceptions apply, allowing home office scenarios for people who live there, but limits employees from travelling to your house for work).
Why do these rules exist? Well, to regulate industrial expansion, limit noise, traffic and road congestion (parking) in residential areas.
YMMV
Very illegal: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/gadget/ar-15-full-auto-sear-...
This guy on YouTube is basically exactly that: https://www.youtube.com/c/42Fab
Of course, if the cable itself is also a device and the cable has a protocol of its own that it needs to speak (looking at USB-C here, I read these stupid things need chips now to indicate they can safely carry more power), then things get more complicated
My understanding is that OP is setting aside legal issues such as zoning, etc for the moment and focusing on feasible business ideas.
However, I could be wrong.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Luty#Firearms_design
There are a few makers who operate as small "satellite" FFLs but typically it's more profitable to just be a reseller or do transfers for $30 a pop.
Making and selling accessories though is very doable and can probably make solid money. Lots of random little connectors or mounts that you can charge an arm and a leg for.
Tech augmentations where you add features to a product, tear down, solder up, assemble back and QA.
And some dude built a nuke in his. Have fun.
David Hahn[1] made an EPA Superfund site, not a nuclear weapon. Generally, the resources of a nation-state are required to build nuclear weapons. I hope it stays that way.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_HahnBare unbranded extruded aluminum fixtures can be had COTS and cheap, and you can either get a board house to design boards for you, or link up starboards to populate the fixtures. A small SMT oven can be had for starting at $500 out of China, though making an SMT oven to solder components to a metal PCB is as simple and cheap as a couple of half-silvered halogen bulbs in a workshop fixture, and a reflective metal top replacing the cage. Due to the nature of metal-PCB rework and how it basically ignores thermal profile recommendations, don't worry too much about following a specific thermal reflow profile on the first reflow attempt, just make sure you're getting hot enough at a decent-but-not-blistering speed to ensure all solders down, and then back off the heat immediately and allow the board to cool down. Adjust the height of the board from the light fixture or adjust exposure time or both as necessary to deal with soldering issues.
Plastic stencils that match your LED/component pad profile/layout are easy and cheap to manufacture (or buy pre-made.) Solder paste is fairly cheap (though there are some that get expensive, like the indium-bearing solders.) Most components are relatively simple to hand-place as long as your solder stencil job is properly-done and the components aren't too tightly-packed together and tiny, though small high-speed dual-nozzle pick and place SMT machines can be had for around $5K ($2500 or so used.)
I suggest looking into servicing the UV market, as that is the market that is blooming. The pandemic has boosted the need for disinfection-capable UV LEDs (specifically UVC,) and also this becomes a boon for other markets, like fluorescent mineral photography, minerals location (things like scheelite are easier to find via their glow when excited by UV radiation at certain wavelengths.) UVA is also showing some experimental results at disinfection, and despite the need for more power to achieve the results, UVA LEDs are much more efficient than UVC, and much cheaper to obtain, so there might be potential there as well if more research is performed and validated.
Alternatively, you can go the simpler route of being an assembly house instead of a manufacturing house, buy fixtures, and pre-populated boards that are designed to mount in said fixtures, make working units, sell those. I did precisely this with another person, literally out of their garage, making aquarium lighting for a while - LED strips, screws, extruded aluminum heatsinks, plastic 'lens' inserts, power wire with switch, water-sealing grommets, power supplies, extrusion end caps. If you work hard, make the right development decisions, and advertise effectively, you can easily grow into something that is sustainable and rewarding.
- LSD
Plenty of people use gas, but I don't see why given the increased risk and cost.
For gin you need to make or buy neutral spirit first. Buying it is ideal as larger providers can make it cheaper and cleaner than you, but needs a license so you won't do this while you're developing a product.
Then you will likely use a pot still to make your final product. You can use the same equipment to do both processes if you have a modular design.
None of the above is set in stone - gin is a bit like jazz and breaking the rules is common.
[1] - https://www.ttb.gov/distilled-spirits/laws-regulations-and-public-guidancehttps://marijuanapackaging.com/collections/filling-machines-...
The 1st free & clean energy device: https://www.KryonEngine.org
I don't see "arbitrary (relativistic?) velocities" as you say. There must be mechanical limits to the speed of the rotation here. What is unlimited is the duration that the engine spins.
When you say "weaponization of this technology could potentially threaten all life on earth", I actually think of nuclear energy, as in the one we have right now.
> When you say "weaponization of this technology could potentially threaten all life on earth", I actually think of nuclear energy, as in the one we have right now.
The difference is that nuclear engineering is expensive and difficult. Magnets are cheap and ubiquitous. A nuclear reaction can continue only so long as there's fuel. Infinite free energy is, well... Infinite.
Somehow, I don't think you're taking this seriously. If you really believe in the potential of this technology, it should scare the daylights out of you.
Thanks for supplying!