August 05, 2020
Welcome to the August 2020 edition of the Electric Eel Wheel Newsletter. This month I've spent much of my time on several future research projects. While the EEW 6.0 project is my top priority right now I've been spending most of my time on it waiting for samples that are required to move forward. The same is true for the Yarn Counter and Cone Winder projects. Rest assured those are all priorities for me, but when I am waiting on those projects I can best use my time looking at a long list of ideas people in the community have given me. This also gives me a better chance at having more projects in the pipeline so the gaps between releases of new fiber tools isn't as large. I don't like to get hopes too high so I don't always talk about these far out research projects, but this month I decided to release a few videos about one of these. It is the knitting machine project mentioned at the end of this letter.
Coupon Code
I decide to try a new thing that I haven't done in the past. I'm offering a coupon code to everyone that will save you 5% on anything you buy in my DreamingRobots store. The code is "summer-special-5" (don't include the quotation marks). This code is valid until midnight on August 9th eastern time (GMT-4). Just put this code in the form asking for a coupon code during checkout and the discount will be automatically displayed on the website.
I feel my prices are fair and they are based on how much the product costs to make so I haven't done discounts in the past. However, I can afford to give a discount so I thought I'd offer one to say thanks. Feel free to share this code with others. It will work for anyone, but it would be nice if you suggest they sign up for this newsletter at the bottom of www.dreamingroboots.com since this was done to thank you reading this newsletter.
EEW 6.0 Update
During the past month I received the Kickstarter funds and gave a manufacturing update. The short summary is that everything is on track and I have been able to secure several different wall power supplies to cover the most common places the EEW 6.0 was purchased (North America, Europe, UK, and Australia).
There was another update asking the community to help make a user manual by giving feedback on my first draft. I got a ton of feedback, and have already implemented most of it. I'm still waiting to get final samples so I can get final photos, but thanks to all the feedback there will be a great paper user manual included with every EEW 6.0.
Circular Knitting Machine Research
I have a long list of fiber tools the EEW community has ask me to make. I decided to start looking into circular sock machine (CSM). One of the reasons I picked this is because the market is kind of like eSpinners before I started making the EEW. There are some low quality 3d printed CSM machines which are affordable, but have limited functionality. Then there are some really nice machines, but they tend to cost $1400+ unless you can find a used one. I'm hopeful I can leverage some of the low cost manufacturing processes I use for the EEW to make a more affordable CSM that works great and document it in a way that makes it easier to use.
Before getting started making a CSM, I decided to buy a cheap non-working CSM from ebay and see if I can fix it so I can learn in depth how these machines work. I'm recording a few videos about this process. So far I made one video where I took apart the CSM, and then a second video where I started fixing it. It's been a really fun project and I hope others find these videos interesting. There is still a long ways to go, but I am now hopeful that after getting this old machine working it will help me decide if I really want to go forward making my own CSM.
– Maurice Ribble
(Inventor of the Electric Eel Wheel)
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