Monthly Archives: July 2012

Christmas in July

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July has been the best month ever for sales at Frivolous Engineering, even better than last December’s sales.  We sold 3 months worth of machines in two weeks.

And today we are officially out of stock on motors.  Fortunately we placed a large order for motors just before things went crazy and are expecting delivery this Friday (August 3rd.)EDIT Wednesday, August 1st. and should be getting machines out the door Thursday, August 2nd. We are taking orders for all our products at this time.  All back-orders will be shipped in the order they were received.

I would like to take this time to thank my newest employee, Marshall for all his help these last several weeks.  Without him I never would have been able to keep up to the orders.  Not only was he a big help in getting machines and kits out the door, he also has helped improve our products, and streamlined production.  And thanks go out to Marshall’s dad for helping edit/improve the assembly and soldering instructions.

So hat’s off to Marshall & his dad for all the help. And a big Thank You to everyone who’s purchased a machine, kit or even just surfed our web site to check things out!

Good News/Bad News

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Good news: we’re back to shipping the next day.

Bad news: we’re out of stock on Kits and Parts Only Kits.

We still have around 50 20 10  Pre-soldered Machines in stock but we anticipate they will be sold out in the next day or two  soon. (EDIT:  completely sold out, but we expect to be shipping August 6th, possibly August 3rd.)

Good thing we placed a parts order a couple of weeks ago, we expect delivery middle of next week (July 25). (Edit:  our order has been delayed, we now expect to be shipping again early next week (July 31st August 6th).

Although the Kits and Parts Only Kits are on back-order you are welcome to place orders for them at this time.  All orders will be shipped out in the order they were received.

What’s all the fuss???

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Congratulations to ThinkGeek and the above viral success.

Keep in mind that even though the Useless Box closely resembles the Ultimate Useless Machine there are significant differences:

  • The “Useless Box” is much harder to build because it doesn’t have a circuit board.
  • It’s also $10 bucks more expensive then the Ultimate Useless Machine.
  • It doesn’t have LEDs lighting up the finger.
  • The ‘Useless’ Box is only available only as a kit and requires soldering

ThinkGeek is currently sold out, but we have plenty of Ultimate Machines in stock including pre-soldered versions.

And we are shipping most orders the next day! (edit:  2 days to process orders now. Lost a day to Friday the 13th accident)

Please check out our store:  http://frivolousengineering.com/?page_id=1568

We proudly give you the finger!

 

I guess it’s time I get off my butt and make a video for the Ultimate Useless Machine.  I’ve put if off much too long.

I should mention that we will be releasing the Wooden Version of Machine.

ThinkGeek, please consider selling the Ultimate Useless Machine, you won’t regret it.

For now, please check out this customer made video of the Ultimate Useless Machine:

 

 

Our New Circuit Boards Are Useless!

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New Useless Circuit Boards

We’ve upgraded the circuit boards in our Useless Machines to a new double-sided design.

We designed the boards in house using CadSsoft Eagle PCB software and had them manufactured at Gold Phoenix.

The new version 1.2 boards have a spiffy blue solder mask and labeling of the parts is much better than the old boards.

Polarity of the LEDs was mistakenly left out of the silk-screen labeling, but other than that we are very happy with the new version.

New Soldering Instructions

With the new circuit boards are new Soldering Instructions.  Please let us know if there are any mistakes or improvements we can to the instructions.