Crazy Weekend Demand

It is clear that Monday April 4th was the deadline for some McMaster Engineering students to get their projects done. Here's how that became insanely clear.

Monday Mar 28.

I get a message asking to print a couple of 'thumb pads'. That was a fun little job and was done by Thursday. Then Friday morning, he message if I could two a couple more prints because his school's printers were booked up. Sure. They were small and got them done too.

Friday 4pm.

I get a call from a. young lady, asking if I could do her print by Monday. I checked the files, it was 20hrs of printing but I had the entire weekend, no problems.

Friday 11pm.

I get a message from another student who needed his print job done by Monday noon(seeing a pattern here yet?). Told him I would quote him in the morning when I got to the shop.

Saturday morning.

Checked his files and it was a 27hr print job. There was no way I could do it. I told him let me work on this.

Saturday afternoon.

I was able to start the first job. Then I did some reaching out to various places and people and found a way to outsource a couple of pieces which would let me get the second job done by Sunday Night for him. I sent him the quote at 7pm Saturday night.

Sunday morning.

I came in to find that the print job I had going stopped minutes right after I left! The remote camera I have showed me the printer moving around but wasn't high enough resolution to show me that no revilement was coming out. Then I forgot to leave a light one so couldn't see it at all during the night. Found out that the filament had snapped and simply wasn't being fed to the hot-end to be melted. There went 18hrs of wasted time. Of course there was zero way I could get the second job done now.

Sunday morning at 11am.

I get an e-transfer from the second job. I was expecting a response to the last email so that I could tell him I couldn't do the job. He sends me an email saying he sent the etransfer. I apologized and told him I couldn't get it done because of the previous failed job. He wasn't mad, a bit let down but said to do it any ways. Ok, gave him an estimate of Tuesday.

Monday Morning.

First job done, had to reprint one of the parts but had lots of time to get it done. Started second job.

Monday afternoon.

I get an email asking if he could cancel the job. I said no, it's already started.

Tuesday.

Second print job done.

Lessons that should be learned from people wanting work:

Get your work done early! That way you can iterate should you have a design flaw(which there definitely was in the first.

When I quoted out the 27hr print job to other places, I was getting 5 or 7 days, and $125-$230. I won't tell you their prices but suffice to say, they got a hell of a bargain.

I'll see if I can work with the University to help out these students with better planning. Either that or buy 5 more machines to get is all done in one weekend.