412: A Daily Meeting, Once A Month

Making It · 22 Sept 2023 · 1h 00m

What this episode covers

Jimmy Diresta, Bob Clagett, and David Picciuto discuss recent project failures and business partnerships. David Picciuto details a failed brass bell casting due to insufficient mold baking, while Jimmy Diresta shares his experience using Pepakura software and LightBurn to create a large cardboard helmet. The hosts also address a Patreon question on managing business partnerships, emphasizing the importance of clear role definition, financial transparency, and conflict resolution strategies.

Mentioned

Companies
CascadeCreate, Weaver Leather
Tools
LightBurn
Also
Pepakura, Eastwood

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • Embedded.fm · 52m

    333: Project Purgatory

    Bailey Steinfadt, a product manager at Dojo Five and long-time board member of the non-profit maker space Area 515, discusses her diverse engineering career and community work. She details the massive volunteer effort to produce over 6,000 face shields for emergency services during the pandemic, highlighting the logistical challenges of distributed manufacturing. Steinfadt also recounts a specific failure at Pioneer involving a soil-moving robot with active-high brakes that rolled out of control upon restart, and reflects on her transition from corporate roles to consulting and back to a product management position.

  • The Startup CPG Podcast · 45m

    #162 - Ops Nightmares, Powered by Crstl

    Hosts Daniel Scharff and Jamie Valenti-Jordan of Catapult Commercialization Services interview founders about operational failures. Katherine Harvey of Bare Bones Broth details a disastrous launch with Costco involving a fraudulent co-packer broker who ghosted them and delivered contaminated product. Brady DeLong of Clean Age recounts a massive inventory mix-up with Walmart caused by incorrect EDI unit-of-measure settings, requiring frantic manual intervention to save the launch. Brett Perrotta of Chubby Snacks shares how his team lost $10,000 on a co-packer's first production run because they failed to follow SOPs, leading to the decision to oversee future runs personally.

  • Thoroughly Considered · 23m

    44: A Good Two Weeks of Stress

    Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost of Studio Neat discuss the production challenges of their Mark One mechanical keyboard, specifically a nickel plating defect on the aluminum pin bodies that caused surface failures during sandblasting. They detail the engineering decision to nickel plate the inner diameter for wear resistance, which inadvertently created adhesion issues on the exterior finish. The team describes the stressful two-week period of developing new racking fixtures and manual sandblasting processes to salvage parts and meet their Kickstarter shipping deadlines.

  • Thoroughly Considered · 51m

    79: An Ever-Widening Funnel

    Myke Hurley, co-founder of Studio Neat, joins hosts Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost to discuss the financial and operational challenges of running a small physical product business. The conversation covers inventory forecasting, the strategic use of short-term loans to leverage bulk pricing, and the 'meta-design' lessons learned from packaging failures like cork and foam. The episode concludes with a technical deep-dive into the iPhone 13 Pro's back-swipe gesture recognition issues and a brief discussion of the movie Tenet.

  • Predictable Designs Podcast · 11m

    WORST DAY Bringing a New Product to Market

    John Teel, host of the Predictable Designs Podcast, recounts his journey bringing the 'Pop-Up Microlite' to market in 2007. He describes his initial excitement from a Blockbuster VP, the stress of presenting in Dallas, and the devastation of receiving blunt negative feedback on a warped 3D-printed prototype. Teel explains how he diagnosed the material failure due to heat, rebuilt trust with the buyer, and leveraged the resulting letter of intent to secure manufacturing investment.

The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by Making It. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.