Kit Deliveries

[pat king]

Kit deliveries normally take up to 4 weeks after receipt of the order. With the Covid 19 interruption of everything that can be extended 2 to 3 weeks. Shipping is very slow now. A 2 pound 8 X 8 X 6 package took 11 days to get from Reno Nevada to Monee, 43 miles South of downtown Chicago. It appears that the shippers are routing shipments any way they can to move the goods in the general direction they need to go.
I don’t know the backlog and/or the availability of Balsa at the laser cutter. The orders are placed with the laser cutter via email. Some kits require laser cuts of Basswood. The laser cutter only stocks Balsa and Plywood. So I have to mail the Basswood from Illinois to California before the kit can be cut. Once the laser cutting is done the parts are mailed to me, I then pack the kit and mail it to the customer. I wish the timeline could be shorter, I will endeavor to get kits out as quickly as possible.
Pat

[Mike Griffin]

I use the same supply chain as you Pat and I feel your pain.

Mike

[Peter in Fairfax, VA]

I'm having good luck with USPS.  I sent about 40 packages Monday and all have arrived. I'm on the East Coast and sent a number of packages to the West Coast, FL, AZ, LA, MO, etc. with good luck. 

A package I sent APO Wednesday has not yet arrived.  However, the Army is in a lot of places.

Peter

[pat king]

Peter,
I sent a kit with Priority Mail from Monee, IL , 43 miles from the center of Chicago, to Milford, CT. I mailed the kit on the 21st of April.  Two missing sheets of laser cut parts , that were ordered the day the kit shipped, were mailed from Southern California to Milford and arrived on the 24th. The kit arrived on the 27th. The tracking on the kit was really strange it went to Connecticut, them Massachusetts, then back Milford, Connecticut. The package I talked about above went from Reno, to San Francisco, to LA, to Memphis, TN , then Chicago and finally to Monee.  The USPS edits tracking when a package has been delivered to cover up the ridiculous routings, the final tracking did not show the Memphis stop that was in an earlier tracking.  I agree that the USPS is normally does a good job, but right now I am seeing package routings that appear to indicate packages are being put on any transportation going in the general direction of the final destination.

Pat

[Paul Wescott]

Why are there no laser cutters in Illinois or Kentucky?

Paul W.

[Tony Drago]

Or FLA.

[Roger Vizioli]

Or FLA.

We "Had" two great ones in FL, both moved N, W. Umland to Alabama and B. Malin North Carolina.
Roger V.

[Tony Drago]

Alabama closer yet.

[pat king]

Why are there no laser cutters in Illinois or Kentucky?

Paul W.

There are plenty of commercial Laser cutters in the Midwest. They do not mess with low volume model airplanes. The ones that might that are closer than California are very expensive. Some that do cut models do not supply the wood, the buyer must supply the wood. I started with the company in California and will remain loyal to them until I no longer can do so. They helped me get started in Laser cut kits and have been good to me. The national total of model airplane laser cutting is nothing to a single commercial laser cutter. As a machine designer doing heavy industrial equipment I regularly purchased laser cut steel parts up to 1" thick. Some of the parts were purchased in tons of parts. Waterjet cutting can do a great job on our kits, but the equipment and the maintenance of that equipment is very expensive. We had an abrasive waterjet that we regularly cut 2" thick 90% Aluminum Oxide fired refractory shapes. Would be great for doing model airplanes, but the cost of operation is prohibitive for the model business.
One of the problems is the fact that we have no real volume of production. If anyone could sell 100,000 of any one kit per year the cost to manufacture those kits would be an order of magnitude less than that to make a few kits a year. We had the same problem in the Sliding Gate business. We sold about $10,000,000.00 worth of mechanical product per year. We maintained over $3,000,000.00 worth of inventory on the shelf to support our customers. The most popular model valve sold about 100 assemblies per year. If we could have sold 100,000 of that model per year we could have easily sold them for half or less than the normal market price.
There are a lot of things working against us as far as cost and availability. I offer more than 200 different airplane designs, I have to try to run my business (?) so that I don't lose money. If it runs at very much of a loss I will have to get out of the model airplane business. I do this because I enjoy it, and so that my customers can enjoy airplanes that are not normally available elsewhere.
The only way to make a Million Dollars in the C/L model airplane business is to start with Two Million Dollars.

Pat

[Larry Renger]

If you check on Amazon, you can get a laser cutter that will handle 12” parts for $400. That would cut at least 80% of most kits. The rest could be quickly gang cut with a bandsaw or jigsaw.

[pat king]

You are correct, that is one way to produce kits. The $400.00 laser probably is much slower than the one I pay $1.00 per minute of cutting time.
My senior sequence at Cal Poly was in tool design. Anything can be built with two extremes of labor input versus capitalization. A person can build a 350 cubic inch V8 engine with a capital expenditure of some tens of thousands of dollars and a bunch of man hours. That engine would cost at least $100,000.00 . At the other end of the equation tens of millions of dollars could be spent on a transfer line and tooling to produce over 5 million of that engine per year. In 1970 those GM 350 cubic inch Chevrolet V8 engines retailed for about $1,800 new in the crate. Right now I could probably afford the man hours to use a small low power laser. If any of my existing consulting contacts starts back up I will be hard pressed to get kits out at the slow rate they are selling.
I can not afford to ignore my consulting business. It pays between $100.00 per hour to over $250.00 per hour. Courtroom work goes for $500.00 per hour plus expenses.
I design and sell model airplanes because I enjoy it, it keeps my mind busy when I do not have industrial product or tooling or manufacturing processes to design. I always appreciate your input, another intelligent viewpoint is always a good thing.

Thanks,  Pat

[Dave Harmon]

There is a laser cutting 'club' here.....join the club for $200 per year and they will instruct you on how to convert your plans using their software and how to use the equipment.
Bring your own wood and use the laser(s) as much as you want for the whole year.
Look for a 'club' in your area....might just be the ticket for non-business laser cutting.
I know that several local guys have been cutting various kits for themselves by copying parts from unbuilt kits or using full size plans to reproduce kits that never were laser cut.
I have several kits that I would like to cut as well as how to use the software and the cutters.
Personally....I would prefer to trace existing parts then scan into the software to do the file conversion then cut the parts....a couple of hours and you have several kits.
Sounds like fun!

[Mike Griffin]

I see my ability to produce kits in the future as very limited due to several factors and for some of the reasons that Pat has previously stated.  Due to the extreme rise in the price of balsa, I do not know how much more the market will bear.  At some point, the major producers as well as the cottage kit makers, like myself, have got to reflect these increased prices in their selling price or they will go broke.  Profit margins are already thin and there is not much room left to negotiate.

Mike