My RamblingsThis was previously in the About Us section, and kept growing, but it really is more of a blog than an About Us, so here it is in it's new home. 03/31/2021 I've worked in the photographic, motion picture, video and digital imaging fields for over 30 years. I'm still working fulltime for the world leader in imaging. When COVID turned the world upside down in March 2020, like many people, I found myself at home. My employer did their best to keep us busy, but honestly there just wasn't enough to keep us busy. So, I started watching movies and TV shows, and I thoroughly enjoyed the rest and relaxation, for a while... 
This was us for much of 2020. In January 2021, I had a project transferring some full size VHS and camcorder (VHS-C/8mm/MiniDV) to MP4 for the family. Most of the province was still in a stay at home order, so work was still pretty quiet. I returned to the couch with Marley. I started to wonder what I would do when I retired... Sitting on the couch with the dog and potato chips isn't a healthy retirement plan. One evening, I scanned a sheet of microfiche for a nice lady here in Milton, and it was a neat little challenge. I thought it would be cool to offer video transfers and some film scanning for others, keep myself busy and maybe make some summertime fun gas money. Then I bought a 3D printer, and my world spun sideways. I've always wanted one and things would never be the same! Tons of project ideas filled my head, bespoke parts for my classic car, cool tools, diabolical inventions, the list was endless! Meanwhile, Kim wasn't exactly sure what I had bought and what use it was, but she was very supportive and was happy that I was so excited. The second item I actually designed myself and printed was for her desk in her home office. 
I think this actually peaked her interest, as I made something that she could relate to. This wasn't just some dumb guy thing taking up space in my office. I was busy designing an Arduino controller for a 35mm slide capture system I was building when she asked what else I could make. That was quite a lengthy discussion and Kim was really interested in the cookie cutters. I printed a Peppa Pig cookie cutter for my grand daughter. It's really cute, but I downloaded it from Thingiverse, and it has a "No Commercial" license, so I cannot offer it for sale. :( I've designed quite a few custom cutters for customers from Facebook, and it's really satisfying. The lead up to Easter was busy enough that I purchased a second printer. Nothing can stop me now! We are equipped to transfer every consumer grade video system sold in North America. So, essentially only NTSC, no PAL or SECAM This includes Beta, VHS, SuperVHS, VHS-C, SVHS-C, Video8, Hi8, Digital8, MiniDV, any and all media card types. Film Scanning is planned to be more of a specialty service. Every place can scan 35mm film, but who can scan old 110, 126 and APS films?? I hear consumers frequently asking about weird film scanning and video transfers, and I can help. Between movie marathons, I found 62 APS (Advantix) films in boxes in my basement. There isn't many places that I'm aware of that can (or has the desire to) scan these oddball sizes. Between regular work and designing 3D cookie cutters, I've been working on building a film transport system to modify a 35mm film scanner for APS. Once this is complete, I can scan my 62 rolls and then offer this service. Get your films out of the basement and into your digital life!!! I want to offer 8mm and Super8 movie films digital transfers also, but I need to design something that will do a proper job of it. There is a slick looking scanner available on Amazon for about $500, but from the samples scans I've seen, it's definitely not something I want to be associated with. People's memories are worth more than poor quality scans. As I'm writing this, it's March 31st 2021 and we made our first Etsy sale today! We are so excited!!! I've learned so much lately. Like who created Arduino and Raspberry PI but didn't send me a memo? Who knows what a memo is anymore? Soon, I will try to understand Wordpress or whatever we choose for our next website. I've created the first one the old fashioned way, hand coding the HTML files, which is something I haven't done for about 15 years... It's all coming back and this dog is learning lots of new tricks! I'm kind of partial to this slogan: Bringing cherished memories out of the basement and into your digital life. 04/09/2021 So, now it's April 9th and another stay at home order was enacted yesterday morning. Work has stopped again. While it's never a good time for a stay at home order, it is a good time to take a week of flex time from the day job and get a bunch of stuff done on the nightshift... Kim posted a few ads on Facebook Marketplace this morning and our Ramadan and Eid cookie cutters got really popular and it looks like I'm going to be printing all weekend, or rather these puppies will be, and I'll just be loading and unloading them. This will give me an opportunity to get caught up on a bunch of custom design orders. 
Picked up a Wacom Intuos graphics tablet the other day. I'm very surprised at what a difference using the pen makes compared to the mouse, and I know it's starting to show in some of the custom cutters I was working on this evening. Should've gotten one of these years ago! 04/15/2021 Making some really nice new contacts in the baking and food markets. Hoping they like my custom designs and we can work together and make some really cool stuff. One of the bakery people bought some of our Ramadan and Eid cutters last week, made cookies, decorated them amazingly and posted them on Facebook, with a shoutout to us. DeliCheescious & Desserts 
HomeBaked by Ayesha 
Very cool. Speaking of Ramadan, both this and Eid have been very good for us, way much better than I had anticipated. So good that I picked up a third printer last Sunday evening, and made plans to do a swap for a fourth, maybe next weekend, figuring it might be handy some day. Monday came around, and I contacted the seller and did the swap Monday evening. So, four printers running non-stop, until Wednesday, when my original printer started having an image quality issue. Spent some time on it, and ordered parts. Hoping to have it running for the weekend. It's been very hard trying to provide a reasonable delivery time with only three printers. We are currently running about 160 printing hours behind. Received our first international Etsy order yesterday! From Texas. 04/17/2021 Found out yesterday that I am using Romulan technology.... Scene from Star Trek Picard: 
Scene from my family room, where we have watched Star Trek Picard.... 
Large order of 21 cutters (Ramadan, Eid and Mother's Day) for a Facebook Marketplace customer. This one took quite a while to print, but they came out fabulous! 
04/22/2021 Started promoting the video transfer service today. Added it as a service to our Facebook page, and created a new page here with details and pricing. Next to be added: - Lots more custom cookie cutters. Father's Day, Birthdays, Canada Day, Summertime fun and then the fall themed ones. - Slide scanning. Need to finish my slide project, mainly getting the light source straightened out. I can choose to leave the 300 watt halogen in there, but it's really just too bright. I have a number of LED and lower wattage halogens to test with the main concerns being image quality and bulb life. - Specialty film scanning, specifically APS, 110, 126, 127, 620, and maybe even Disc. Just need some design time and an available printer. - 8MM and Super8 movie film capture. This will be a huge project once I can get to it. I have a projector to use as the transport system, but I will need to build a number of assemblies and decide what to use as a capture device... and then there's software integration... 04/24/2021 A facebook post by my daughter Kelsey prompted me to have Kim design a Covid vaccine cookie cutter, which I've just added to our Cookie Cutter section, and Kim has added to Facebook, Instagram and Etsy. I think it's really cool. 
Seems that the Ramadan and Eid rush is almost over, way less orders this week than last week. Got some maintenance completed on the printers, changing some PTFE tubes and a couple nozzles. Ordered a Flashforge Dreamer printer, which has two extruders so it's capable of two colours. It also can handle ABS, so I'll be able to make my car stuff. ETA is Monday, so I know what I'll be doing after dinner!! Here's something I fixed the other day. We bought these little hanging lamps for the backyard last year. The spike is plastic and the steel pole fits into the top. Of course the plastic isn't very strong and one of them broke last year. I designed and printed new pieces that friction (translation: a little whack of my mallet) fit onto the top of the spikes. These should never break again. Well, never say never, especially since I printed them with PLA which can't handle extreme temperatures. Should be interesting to see how long they last this summer. 
It was really satisfying to build these and have a better solution to what would normally have been to throw them away. Fill the landfills... :( Need to do some serious reorganizing of my office, and the office expansion that's happened into the family room. I think I need a wire rack. 04/28/2021 Spent way too much money at Uline the other day, but we are going to really turn up the presentation of the products with nice tissue paper and custom stickers. Downloaded files to print a balsa wood slitter. Re-designed the blade holder section to hold a Stanley blade and am using this to slit corrugated cardboard to 15MM for packaging of our Etsy orders. Don't want things to get crushed by Canada Post. Now I just need to find some glue sticks... 04/30/2021 Today was 4/30 and the new M1 iMac was available for ordering. Mine should be here between June 16th to 23rd. Gonna be quite the speed increase from this Mid 2011 iMac, but I'm sure I will get accustomed to it rather quickly. 05/13/2021 Today is May 13th, and it's been a couple weeks since I added anything here. Just been too busy with work, home and business. My Dreamer arrived on May 3rd. It was a great price as it was an Amazon return, with no warrantee. We took a chance that it was returned because the buyer didn't like it or didn't know what he was doing. The box rattled when I picked it up and Marley looked concerned... 
The original buyer, Craig, included a note: "The printer does not work. Tried everything - incl help line See print efforts included here in the box" Opened it up and found the right extruder motor, heat sinks, screws, spacers, washers and springs inside the printer and at the bottom of the box. It seemed that all the original packaging was there but just shoved into the box by an upset customer. After careful examination, only 1 screw was missing. It must have fallen out one of the holes in the bottom of the box. It would appear he had a serious issue with the blue nozzle. 
After cleaning everything up, I found the right and left nozzles were not at the same level. I'd bet this was like this leaving the factory, so Craig had no chance of resolving this without prior 3D printer experience. Based on the bag full of messed up samples, it appears he didn't start out with bed leveling tests. I had the printer running production by Monday night, and it ran non stop for over a week along with the other 4 printers. 
Looks like I've bought another Star Trek printer. The Dreamer was used as food replicators on the Utopia Planitia Fleetyards in an episode of Star Trek - Picard. 
From the looks of things, the Eid rush is now actually over. Haven't printed anything Eid related since yesterday (May 12) afternoon. We had another huge order come in on Monday evening, to be delivered Tuesday evening. We had all 5 printers running plus this old dinosaur that I bought originally for parts, but I've been able to get it to print. Yes, I borrowed a little bit of the kitchen for it. It really needs a flat stable surface to be functional. 
It's not as straightforward as my other printers, and it definitely isn't as easy, but once I get it dialed in it prints fine. No wifi... MicroSD sneaker-net only... barbaric! 06/14/2021 Been a while, quite a while, it's now June 14th. Installed a glass bed in the Dreamer and it's so much better. I picked up some ABS to try out but haven't had the time yet. I noticed the lamp base supports that I made with PLA were a little soft and squishy after sitting in the direct sun. Need to make a set of those with ABS, but I'm told that the fumes are somewhat toxic, so I'll need to put the Dreamer outside on the deck when I get around to doing this. It's all enclosed and temperature controlled so it should work fine. My new M1 iMac arrived on June 3rd. Since my office and family room were still upside down, it sat in the box until the 6th. That was definitely difficult but I needed to get it's new home all ready. 
And it's so thin!!! 
It's so nice to have something fast and new. The old iMac is now dedicated to video. 
I've moved the printers out of the family room and that room is almost back to normal. The hallways is a different story... 
And my office is a little crammed... 
But I don't think I would want it any other way. 06/20/2021 Happy Fathers Day to everyone that might be a father. Started playing around with ABS yesterday afternoon. Took the Dreamer outside in the well ventilated outside world to remake the lamp base supports in ABS. 
Except for one file that I sliced without setting the software to ABS, and I had a big mound of black spaghetti, things went extremely well. I honestly didn't think it would go that well. I was able to print two new lamp post caps and start working on replacement posts for some other outdoor lighting. Why do they make these things out of such brittle plastic? So you buy new ones every couple years, right? 
09/01/2021 Been a really long time since I've been here. So much has happened. I made more ABS stuff with the Dreamer, had it in the shed this time as it looked like rain, and I printed for about 18 hours straight. I purchased a small vacuum molding machine (on sale at Michaels) so I can experiment with making 3D prints for chocolate bar molds. I have a very special customer that is interested in this. Hurt my back in my day job, so it's been light duty for the past 5 weeks. I've changed the link from our products to the Etsy store as I've created so many new products it would take me a week to post them all here, plus I had to re-organize how I have the product categories were so most of the SKUs changed. 09/18/2021 Added another printer to the fleet this week. Branded as a Monoprice, it was built by Flashforge, and after a firmware upgrade it is now a Flashforge Guider II. Now that I have it dialed in, I'm really loving it. It has a build plate of 280x250x300 so we can now make huge things or fill the print area with multiple items and let it run all day unattended. 
My back seems better, but it migrated to my leg. Mostly numb (pinched nerve) but pain if I remain in the same position for anything more than a few minutes. Today is definitely a good day as I've been able to sit in my office for the past few hours working on Christmas designs. Now that everything is printing, I can head to the couch. :) 
If I'm lucky, someone will bring me some food.... :) That was serious weird... I just finished typing the line above and Kim walked into my office with a smoked meat sandwich, cheese and a drink. My world is awesome today. 09/26/2021 Had a another good Saturday, designed 14 new cutters for Kim to test and working on a local custom order for a birthday party. Got a lot accomplished. We've received a good number of personalized dog treat cutters lately. I just wish I would take more photos of these creations before I package and mail them off. 
I had submitted the 3 Extra Large (5 inch) dog bones to print on the Guider before we went to sleep Friday night. When I woke up, I thought "I should've done a time lapse video of that!". It hadn't completed yet, so I sent up a camera to capture a frame every 2 minutes. Should've done this AFTER coffee, because my math wasn't very good and didn't get many frames, but here is my first attempt: Finally reorganized our alphabet and number cookie cutters and created Full Sets in our Etsy shop so a customer can order all of one size with one click at a significantly discounted price. We received an order from a consumer in California for a full set of A to Z in 4 inch tall the very next day! Field of Dreams in real life. It will take about 36 hours to print the 4 inch alphabet. I can fit 4 letters at a time on the Guider so it's only 6 and half print cycles. Need to keep my eyes peeled for another Guider 2 printer. I don't want to suggest that we need another printer, but they're all in use right now... and I'm typing this, so there is most likely something more important that I should be doing. 10/19/2021 I picked up another printer last week, or as Emma put it "ANOTHER PRINTER????" Purchased it used from a nice man in Brampton. A little older design than the others, but a legendary printer none the less, Flashforge's Creator Pro. Similar to the Dreamer (dual extruder) but an all steel frame. A little cumbersome as it will only print from an SD card, but it's the same Ecosystem as the rest of the farm, so it's not painful, but I certainly couldn't have more than one printer that runs on sneaker-net (SD card). 
It has great handles on the sides so it's easy to carry down to the garage when I need to print ABS. ...and no, it's not bigger than a Volkswagen... Been really busy lately, with Halloween and Diwali. And designing Christmas themed cutters... and Paw Patrol! Speaking of Halloween, this pumpkin has been the runaway hit this season. Easily sold more than 50 of this guy alone. 
...and yes, that cookie was delicious! 11/17/2021 Been too long since I updated last, again... In my defence, it's our Christmas rush and the Etsy orders have kept us really busy. Picked up another printer on Sunday, yes another one. This is a barely used Adventurer 3 (25 hours) and it's pretty slick. Not sure if it's been on TV like some of the others, but it's pretty neat. I've already more than doubled the usage in the past few days!! 
01/30/2022 Really long time since my last post and so much has happened! So much is still happening... I really don't have to stop and do this, but if I don't, I know I'll forget everything that's happened. Had a pretty large order for a marketing firm from Edmonton for custom cutters for their Christmas gift packs tpo their customers. The Guider was down, so it was an all hands on deck for the other printers. Took about 2 weeks but we managed to print and package 250 of these custom 3" cutter/stamps. 
All of them stacked up on a table 
Christmas was really busy for cookie cutters. I could never have imagined the volume of orders we processed. So busy in fact that we added another two Adventurer 3 printers. These were new as there wasn't anything on the used market. We have a really nice customer in Nova Scotia that makes sensory kits for children that we've made quite a few items for, gingerbread men, gingerbread houses, Christmas trees and so on. She ordered a bunch of pink Easter bunnies so I shot this little video: Also picked up a high volume 35MM slide scanner and a Wolverine type 8MM/Super8 film scanner. I had previously discounted these type of scanners due to some poor results I found online but that's before I found optimization details from a forum. The slide scanner has a small issue with the feed mechanism that I need to resolve, but just simply haven't had time. The motion picture scanner has had some experimental scans performed, and I made a PTR cleaning roller unit for it. Looking forward to digitizing the backlog of family Super8 movies This is a great solution for silent movies, but for sound I will need to extract the audio using my projector, still need to replace that drive belt, and then add the audio back into the scanned movie in iMovie. We finally have our family room and hallway back, well mostly. Picked up some metro racks and redesigned my office. There was still one printer and table in the family room when this was taken, but it's in there now and really isn't noticeable from this angle. 
04-25-2022 Again, way too much time since my last post, but I have been super busy. Starting with 3D printing, I picked up a second Guider 2, and a Creator Pro 2. The Guider 2 is identical to the previous one and will definitely help out with the large alphabet orders. The Creator Pro 2 is an IDEX machine. Independent Dual Extruders, meaning that there is two print heads that are not physically attached. They each have their own Y axis motor, so that when you are printing with 2 different colours, they don't get in each other's way, resulting in drops of wrong coloured filaments where you don't want it. They can also print two of the same item at the same time, so technically, it's output is double that of a regular printer. Photos of these to follow once I get the office reorganized again. I've been working on learning how to use Davinci Resolve for film and video transfer post processing. It's an extremely powerful and confusing piece of software but it is one of the best. I still haven't gotten back to working on the 35MM slide scanner or APS film scanner, but I'm hopeful that I can get at that before the weather gets too nice. We received an Etsy order for a place called Reunion the other week. Neither myself nor Kim had ever heard of it before and after consulting Google, it's an island off the east coast of South Africa. Isn't that cool? 05-22-2022 Almost a month has passed and I've been working on reorganizing the office. No photos yet but here's a time lapse video of the Creator Pro 2 making 4 rollers for a filament holder. I have white filament loaded into each of the two extruders so it's printing in duplicate mode, 2 rollers with each head. This took 90 minutes to print, which would've taken 3 hours with only one nozzle. 06-04-2022 Another duplicate mode print, of two 3" roller skate cookie cutters. This took 2.5 hours to print, which would've taken 5 hours with only one nozzle. 05-04-2023 Well, that was almost a year since my last post... And it's been quite a year. I honestly don't remember most of it, must be getting old..er... I ripped up the carpet in my office, installed LVP flooring, painted the walls, replaced the light fixture, installed curtains, and added a few more printers. One of my Finders (red ones) kind of died, or something, so I replaced it, added 2 more Adventurer 3 printers, moved the Creator Pro to the garage (so I can do smelly filaments), added another Creator Pro 2 and an Adventurer 4. The Adventurer series have a one piece nozzle/heater/thermistor assembly that can be swapped out in a few minutes, so I can switch quickly between 0.3 MM and 0.4 MM nozzles. We started doing a lot of small (like 1/2") cutters for polymer clay and multi cutters consisting of 10, 20, 40 or 60 cutters from 1/2" to 1.75" on one form that allows for serious baking. After some experimenting, we determined that a finer nozzle would be best for these smaller detailed cutters and the multi cutters. I switched both Guider 2 printers over to a 0.3 MM and installed 0.3 MM nozzles in all the Adventurer 3 printers. I'm using both 0.3 MM and 0.4 MM nozzles in the Adventurer 4 as it has a larger bed for large items with the 0.4 MM nozzle, and when I need more capacity for multi cutters, I just pop the 0.3 MM nozzle in. Some photos of my office this year: 
And, this season the Adventurer 3 printer was a prop for a replicator (it made a weapon) on Picard. 
No photos of the garage area yet, but the Creator Pro has a little companion, a Voxelab Polaris resin printer. I've been playing around with water soluble resin because it's not near as nasty as the regular resin. 05-20-23 So, I admit it, I was addicted to buying printers for a while... I bought an Adventurer 3 in December 2022 I bought another Adventurer 3 in January 2023 I bought a Finder (to replace one that is very sick) in February 2023 I bought an Adventurer 4 in March 2023 So, I decided to quit cold turkey. I did NOT buy a printer in April 2023 I actually made it just over halfway through May 2023, until I bought a Guider 2S. It's the high temperature capable version of the Guider 2, which I already had two of, so now I have three of them. 
They are probably the most rugged printer model I have. They are also the largest and heaviest. Not sure where I can put this one yet... I'm fairly certain that Kim won't let me leave it here on the kitchen counter... :( I think it looks good here in the kitchen. 08-22-23 Again, it's been too long since the last posting. I reconfigured the wire racks, retired the Dreamer (it was the one I used the least) and Managed to fit all the printers (15) into my office nicely. Kim had me working overtime on designing multi-cutters, but they are definitely a great seller. Nothing will ever top the dog treat cutters though... Purchased a tabletop CO2 laser cutter/engraver two weeks ago. I inspected it, improved the grounding, verified it worked and really haven't done much with it yet. It is capable of some really cool stuff, but I need to learn a whole lot more before I can decide what to add to the Etsy shop. 01-13-24 Been a seriously long time.... Had a really great Christmas season. Plenty of orders and lots of super nice customers. We did have one outstandingly unusual customer. She purchased a 5 or 6 cutters, a couple stamp/outlines and a couple detailed cutters. They were all 3 inch versions. After she received them she sent us a message saying that they were all useless since they were so short (15mm like most makers), but she needed 1 inch for her thicker dough, and she expected them all to be 3 inches in both directions. So, who the heck rolls cookie dough to 1 inch thick??? And one of the items she purchased was our thick pencil. It's thick because a long skinny pencil doesn't make good cookies. Somehow she was expecting a 3" x 3" pencil?? We explained to her that all the dimensions and the details about the 15mm height is in the listing details, like it's always been. She left a bunch of 1 star reviews saying that you need to read all the fine print. - honestly, who doesn't read all the fine print? Had a couple other very usual customers, but one is enough for now. Picked up a used Creator 3 printer. It's an IDEX (Independent Dual Extruder) machine with a large build area of 300 x 250 x 250, and it's even larger and heavier than the Guider 2 printers. The machine was filthy, the left piezo was dead and the extruders were in rough shape. Definitely not taken care of since it only had 1600 hours. Replaced both extruder assemblies which included new piezos. I've switched all the Guider 2 printers to a 0.3 nozzle for fine work, so this the large project printer. 
And I ordered a NEW Adventurer 5M which is a Core XY printer, super fast! Marley was a little jealous when it arrived. 
I was very excited when I set it up on the kitchen counter! It's actually very compact, but it has a build volume of 220 x 220 x 220 
Here it is printing a maple leaf outline: With the addition of these two printers, I've re-arrange my office yet again. Moved a few Adventurer 3 printers and a Finder out to the garage for storage. I'm actually down to only 14 printers in my office, plus one in the pantry. 
Someone posted a video to IG about how to make homemade gold fish crackers the other day, and we've received a ton of orders for our fish multi-cutters. It's like Christmas again! 02-04-24 So I decided that I was liking the Adventurer 5 so much and we were so busy with all the gold fish orders, and all the additional items that were being ordered that I purchased a second Adventurer 5. In my usual tradition, I first placed it on the kitchen counter to get it working. Then, they put this model on sale from Jan 29 to Feb 2, at a pretty good discount (20%), so I just had to order two more. And just when they arrived, so did the two 0.25 mm nozzles I had ordered back on Dec 31st. I definitely have some re-arranging to do in the office, and I will be retiring the Adventurer 3 and 4 printers, and probably the Creator Pro and some of the Finders. These new printers are just so fast and the quality is amazing. I can honestly say that right now, I have way too many printers. 04-21-24 Again, too long since my lest posting. Been busy with rearranging my office, packaging area and trying to master a new slicer (Orca). 
I also recently purchased a second hand Tronxy X5SA printer. It's a more traditional style 3D printer, but has a fairly large build area (330 x 330 x 330) with the intention to use it to print some of the very large custom multi cutter requests we have received. We had a request last week for a twelve up 3" dog bone multi cutter which worked out to be 0.45 mm smaller in width than the build area of my Creator 3. I don't believe this Tronxy can replace the Creator 3 but it should be able to handle the larger items once I finish upgrading the reliability. 
10-25-24 Seems to be a trend, here... again, too long since my lest posting. Got really busy with the day job this summer. Just bought a Bambu Labs A1 mini combo to add to the farm. It has a fairly small build volume (180x180x180) but I bought it mainly for a AMS so that I can make multi-colour prints using different materials easily and consistently. I think it runs on pure magic. :) It's main function at this time is Personalized Dog Food Scoops Have a look here! 
11-19-24 CUPW gave their 72 hour strike notice last week, and Friday at 12:01 am the postal workers were on a nationwide strike. Everyone was predicting rotating walkouts. I had previously scheduled some time off from my day job, to use up vacation days and I ended up spending all of Thursday printing like mad in order to get all the work out. I had worked late Tuesday night and sent a bunch out on Wednesday, and the international orders made it out of the country before the strike, but sadly all the orders I sent out Thursday afternoon didn't go very far. I feel really bad for everyone who's order is stuck in a shipping container somewhere until the strike ends. I really don't know what will happen if they start asking for refunds. I certainly hope Etsy covers some of it at least, otherwise it'll be a sad Christmas for everyone. After much research, I found a replacement for Canada Post on Saturday. A company called Chit Chats. They move US and international bound parcels over the border to Niagara Falls NY and send them out with USPS. They also route domestic parcels using a few smaller delivery services to cover most of the country. They don't do post office boxes or rural routes, so I have to remember to check every domestic order that comes in to ensure it can be delivered. Although, it certainly has not been busy since the strike was announced. Last Monday and Tuesday (before the strike announcement) was our two busiest days ever, We had more orders those two days, than we did every week since January. It was shaping up to be a great season, but I can only assume that everyone is afraid to order due to the strike. It's not completely dead, but it's not feeling like Christmas. 12-12-24 No end in sight for the Canada Post strike. I have located another domestic delivery service. They are actually a Purolator reseller and their prices are pretty good, and since it is Purolator, it's also very quick, and they deliver to all the places that Chit Chats doesn't This gives us an option for the rural and express customers. They are a little out of the way to drop off and only open weekdays 9-5, but they are good option. I'm not seeing any good reasons to return to Canada Post once the strike is over. Kim on the other hand, wants to reinstate our $3.85 untracked domestic option but I'm not sure I'm really into it. This inexpensive domestic option is oversized lettermail, so the envelope needs to be a maximum of 2 cm thick. As I've never felt all that comfortable with the machine handling of lettermail, I use 15 mm cardboard strips to loop around the cutters to protect the cutting edge from damage. We've never had anything get damage, so maybe I'm just being overly cautious? Packing everything in boxes is so much quicker. The box costs about the same as the bubble envelope. I add some crinkle paper or bubble wrap to each box so there's a few cents there. For the bubble envelopes, I'm adding the cardboard strips, which we slit down (in the garage) from the large cardboard roll. This also takes a hot melt glue gun and glue sticks, plus envelope address labels. I have a good inventory of all of these things, but it's the time I spend glueing that could be put to better use. I found a used Bambu A1 mini combo on Facebook Marketplace at a price I couldn't ignore. The price was so good that I was concerned it could be stolen, but it had the seller's name, address and phone number on the original shipping label on the box. Yes, he had the original box. Who has room to save these things? The seller said that one of the AMS slots wasn't loading, and it wasn't... until I cleared out the jammed piece of filament. Works great! It was less than a year old, so it would've still been covered under Bambu's warrantee if he had contacted them. The build surface is a little worn so I've ordered a replacement. Didn't have an ideal place to put it so I moved a Guider 2 to the other side of the shelf and designed a reverse AMS bracket to attach the AMS to one of the Metro shelf poles and I have to say, it's pretty cool. 
I might spin my other AMS around. It's so much easier to load the filament when it's backwards like this. 03-13-25 Well, that was quite a long break... As usual, I've made some changes. We changed the Care Card that we include with each order, adding a QR code that opens the website This new page has links for the sugar cookie , dog treat and cracker recipes that we include with every order, along with some videos on how to use some of the products. Still in development, we have an area for Caring for your products and Tips & Tricks I also picked up two Qidi Plus 4 printers to replace the oldest Guider 2 and the Creator 3 The Plus 4 is a corexy printer, like the Adventurer 5M and Bambu printers, so it's wicked fast, but it has a large 305 mm x 305 mm build area. It's also prepped for Qidi's upcoming AMS system. 
08-31-25 Well, that was a really long break... As usual, I've made more changes. We launched new pet products, namely personalized dry food scoops and personalized wet food lids. They are really cool. I got a super deal on a Sovol SV08 printer (auction, open box) to replace another Guider 2 and the Tronxy. The SV08 is a Voron 2.4 printer, with a flying gantry, so it's wicked fast, and it has an enormous 350 mm x 350 mm build area. 
I also found a fifth Adventurer 5M printer (auction, broken) that only needed a new ribbon cable for the display. I have more than enough printing capacity for this Christmas season. I also really stocked up on filament during the Bambulab anniversary sale. There was no way I wanted to run out during the Christmas rush. Sadly, due to some %#^@& in the USA I will not have the opportunity to run out of filament this Christmas as the USA de minimus was abolished 2 days ago. The current import duty is 35%, which would take a 54% price increase to cover and USPS isn't allowing any DDU shipments. This really sucks. Christmas 2024 was ruined by the Canada Post strike and now Christmas 2025 is ruined due to tarifs! |
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