Big Blue Saw

The Blog Has Moved!

2008-01-19T09:15:00.000-05:00

The Big Blue Saw Blog has moved to a new location. Please visit http://www.bigbluesaw.com/saw/blogsection/ for the latest blog updates.

Customer Testimonial

2008-01-13T11:57:00.000-05:00

Here's a great testimonial we received from Russell Kirk, one of our customers:

"Congratulations on a great website and service! It is something we've needed for quite awhile in the prototyping industry. We work with another local water jetter for parts larger than 36". We have already sent and received parts from Big Blue in the time that it has taken them just to get us a quote. Keep up the great work!"

Thanks for the kind words, Russell.

Desginer Update

2007-08-19T22:29:00.000-04:00

The Big Blue Saw Designer now no longer uses a pop-up window; it appears right inside your main browser window. This is a much cleaner design and should eliminate some of the problems people were having with security software blocking the window.

Also, the Designer will automatically save your working design so that when you re-visit the designer page within the same browser session, your work will be re-loaded.

Try the Big Blue Saw Designer

Video Demo of Designer

2007-08-03T20:47:00.000-04:00

There's now a demonstration video on the website that takes you through the process creating a part with the Big Blue Saw Designer, from creating simple shapes and ordering, to a look at the final part. Check it out.

Steam hamsters and RoBoxers

2007-07-12T22:46:00.000-04:00

Be sure to check out the latest additions to our customer
projects page:

First up are Carlo Bertocchini's RoBoxers. For more information about building and competing with your own RoBoxer, visit the official RoBoxer website.

Next, we present the live steam hamster wheel from David Wegmuller. Don't miss the video at YouTube.

Big Blue Saw Designer Test

2007-07-04T20:46:00.000-04:00

I'm happy to announce that we've begun testing Big Blue Saw Designer. This tool lets you design your part and get a quote online. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Link.

Big Blue Saw's New Look

2007-05-23T21:28:00.001-04:00

As you've probably noticed, Big Blue Saw's website has a new, slick appearance on all pages. This is just one of many wonderful changes you'll see in the coming months.

Enjoy our new price break

2007-05-11T22:42:00.000-04:00

At the suggestion of our customers, we've added a price break when you order 5 or more parts. Previously, you had to order at least 10 parts to receive a price break. For parts made of inexpensive materials that were easy to cut, it didn't matter much, as each part was fairly cheap. But it made ordering a few expensive parts too pricy for for many of you.

3D function made from flat parts

2007-04-20T16:14:00.000-04:00

I've been looking for a good example of this kind of construction for a while now. The idea behind this is that you can assemble a series of thin pieces together to make a continuous, arbitrarily complex curvy surface. Of course, your accuracy will be limited by the thickness of the pieces.

This is a 3D surface function made from a series of thin pieces. It looks like cardboard. The pieces were laser cut.

I've also read about prototype rocket bells being created using a similar technique.

Link.

Why waterjet?

2007-02-23T10:09:00.000-05:00

Big Blue Saw has focused on bringing our customers the best online waterjet service available. I'm often asked by friends and potential customers why we use waterjet cutting to make our parts. The waterjet cutting process offers several advantages:

Waterjet cutting works with a wide variety of materials, including nearly all plastics and metals.
The stock material is mostly unaffected by the cutting process. Little heat, for example, is generated by a waterjet cutter.
Nearly any two dimensional shape can be cut from stock material.
The accuracy is high enough for most ordinary purposes.
You can design parts using common 2D CAD or drawing programs, making it more accessible to non-specialists.
Its easy operation and simple design lower costs.

Our long-term goals do include offering other types of machining and manufacturing. Waterjet cutting does have its limitations, but I figured that it was the best technology to start Big Blue Saw with.

Nixie Clock

2007-01-24T22:24:00.000-05:00

One of our customers sent has been working on a Nixie clock. Have a look at the results.

Recent find of 3D objects from 2D parts: mannequins

2007-01-09T23:05:00.000-05:00

AKI International makes mannequins by assembling 2D parts into sleek human shaped forms. (Via BoingBoing)

New DemoSat rover in progress

2007-01-09T22:37:00.000-05:00

The University of Northern Colorado Space Grant Team is working on a new rover for this year's DemoSet contest. You may recall seeing an article about their first rover on our website. This new rover features an aluminum frame with parts cut by Big Blue Saw. Casey Kuhns posted some photos of the work in progress over on flickr.

Google Casts Its Eye In Our Direction

2006-11-14T19:32:00.000-05:00

Our use of Google Checkout has landed us a spot on the Official Google Checkout Blog.

Your R&D = Tax Credit

2006-11-07T20:12:00.000-05:00

Many of Big Blue Saw's customers are small businesses developing new products to sell to customers. Many of them are not aware that the US federal government offers a tax credit for research and development of new products. Now, I'm not a tax expert, but it appears that this tax credit is worth looking into. It means filling out IRS form 6765 with your tax return.

Many states, including Georgia, also offer a similar tax credit.

So, if you use Big Blue Saw for R&D, consult your tax expert about ways to save on your business taxes.

Human-Electric Trike with Big Blue Saw

2006-10-30T11:02:00.000-05:00

One of our customers is working on a very interesting project: a human electric trike. Some of the waterjet cut parts from Big Blue Saw are visible in this blog post.

Added aluminum stock

2006-10-25T14:13:00.000-04:00

Aluminum seems to be a popular material, so we've added a few new aluminum 6061 stock thicknesses. There is now 6061 aluminum from 0.025 inches all the way up to 1 inch thick.

Google Checkout

2006-09-11T23:34:00.000-04:00

Google Checkout has been available as an option for a while. I didn't want to announce it until I had the press release ready.

It has a couple advantages for you, the customer. Some of you have told us that you don't trust PayPal. Others would like all of their online shopping information stored in one place.

Google Checkout is a good deal for us and for our customers. We'll still continue to support our existing shopping cart and credit card/eCheck payments via PayPal.

UNC Rover

2006-08-23T19:36:00.000-04:00

The University of Northern Colorado Space Grant Team built a robotic rover using Big Blue Saw. Read the article for details.

Sponsoring robotic events

2006-08-20T00:03:00.000-04:00

Big Blue Saw is proud to announce that we are sponsoring several robotic events: Team Think Tank's SNF, Upstate New York Robot Combat Club, and Robot Battles.

If you're part of an organization, event, or team that might benefit from sponsorship by Big Blue Saw, and you have a web page with Google PageRank of 5 or more, please contact us.

About the Outages

2006-07-28T18:56:00.000-04:00

Some of you may have noticed that Big Blue Saw's web site was down yesterday and part of today. This was due to a fire leading to a loss of power near the Big Blue Saw Global Data Fortress. Power is now back and we're running as well as ever.

Waterjet and 3D objects Part 5

2006-06-30T16:36:00.000-04:00

Vanessa Cutler, an artist from the UK, uses a waterjet to cut glass for her sculptural pieces.

Waterjet and 3D objects Part 4

2006-06-29T12:37:00.000-04:00

As many of you know, robotics is one of my hobbies. So I was pretty pleased to find out that the Spring Flamingo, one of the first really good dynamically stable walking robots, has body panels made with a waterjet.

Waterjet and 3D objects Part 3

2006-06-28T18:13:00.000-04:00

Lamina Design has software that lets you turn interesting 3D designs made in Rhino or other CAD software into wonderful 3D objects that can be made on a waterjet.

Waterjet and 3D objects Part 2

2006-06-27T18:10:00.000-04:00

Some students at MIT used MIT's waterjet to create a flexible, interactive surface. The surface can be moved along the same dimension as the cut.

Waterjet and 3D objects

2006-06-26T15:23:00.000-04:00

Big Blue Saw currently features waterjet cutting for manufacturing operations. Waterjets are extremely flexible tools, but can't cut slots or pockets like a milling machine. But you can use waterjet cut parts to make real 3D objects. It takes some creative design, but it can be done. The Big Blue Saw RAZR cradle is one example of how this can be done. I also recently found an interesting article which details the "Hole and Tab Method" for making 3D parts with a waterjet. Link.

Waterjet Article

2006-06-22T22:00:00.000-04:00

I just posted an article (original source: Wikipedia)
about how waterjets work.

New address

2006-06-07T20:56:00.000-04:00

Our new address:
Big Blue Saw
1100 Hammond Dr. N.E.
Suite 410A-105
Atlanta, GA 30328

This information can also be found on our Contact Us page.

What does that have to do with the price of aluminum?

2006-06-06T22:01:00.000-04:00

Raw material prices have gone up lately, especially for aluminum. Turning aluminum ore (bauxite) into usable metal is very energy intensive. Aluminum manufacturers use electricity to break the elemental aluminum out of the aluminum oxides.

If you've gassed up your car lately, you know that energy prices are up. So aluminum prices are up, too.

Does this affect Big Blue Saw's prices? Only a little bit. Parts made from thicker aluminum stock will cost more in raw materials, but those materials have higher cutting costs anyway. For example: a customer recently placed an order for a part made from 0.75" thick aluminum. His price was about $90. With the new aluminum prices, it would be about $94.

Improved checkout and more

2006-06-03T11:39:00.000-04:00

The checkout process has been streamlined. You now don't need to register to be able to check out.

There are a bunch of small changes, too, like improved URLs (good to help us be spotted by search engines) and minor content updates across the site.

Big Blue Saw on eHub

2006-06-01T13:02:00.000-04:00

Big Blue Saw was listed today on Emily Chang's eHub, a popular review of new, interesting websites.

Stability and minor fixes

2006-05-11T22:26:00.000-04:00

You may have experienced problems like weird page renderings and error messages in the last couple weeks when uploading a file. Most of those problems have been fixed.

New examples and FAQ updates

2006-04-22T22:28:00.000-04:00

I've added a several examples of stuff that has been made using Big Blue Saw. Included are a robot gearbox, a nixie clock, and a cell phone stand.

In a similar vein, several of the FAQs have been updated with photos which illustrate the answers.

Multiple parts per file

2006-04-21T15:59:00.000-04:00

There's a new feature: you can now create multiple parts with a single CAD file. They all must be able to be cut from the same stock material. This should save setup costs and the hassle of having to connect parts together.

I used this recently to create a multi part gearbox (shown in the image for this post) for a fighting robot. I'll be adding a description of that, with photos, sometime in the near future.

You can't create multiple parts with a single raster (PNG/GIF) file just yet.

Updates for this feature to the online documentation are forthcoming.

Big Blue Saw's RAZR cradle on Make site

2006-03-24T12:55:00.000-05:00

The folks over at Make Magazine have just posted an
article about making a RAZR phone cradle using Big Blue Saw.

Note that we still have a few of these available for sale. $16 + $4 shipping to US addresses. Also, I have the correct sized stainless steel hardware for an extra $3 if you want that. Just contact me through Big Blue Saw: info@bigbluesaw.com.

New materials and stock selection process

2006-03-14T22:47:00.000-05:00

I've added several new options for material, including cold roll steel and polycarbonate plastic. Metal alloys are now specified by name. Changes on the back end allow me to add new stock material a lot more easily now, so expect to see that list growing.

The process for selecting a stock material is a little different. Let me know if you like it.

There's been a problem over the past couple days with uploading raster (PNG/GIF) images; this should be fixed now.

Better rendering

2006-02-19T01:39:00.000-05:00

I've improved the preview image for uploaded files so that they look a bit more like real metal, as seen here. I have yet to set up rendering for plastic.

New Server

2006-02-16T22:44:00.000-05:00

I plan to switch to a new server and host either tonight (February 16) or tomorrow (February 17). This upgrade is possible due to the generous help of the people at One Ring Networks and NGT.

GIF support

2006-01-10T23:51:00.000-05:00

Big Blue Saw now supports GIF files for making parts.

A bunch of small updates

2006-01-10T16:34:00.000-05:00

First off: an updated About Big Blue Saw page with more information about Big Blue Saw, and about me.

Second: an updated FAQ index which is a little easier to use.

Third: URLS have been cleaned up, so that http://www.bigbluesaw.com/ shows you the home page without a redirection, and the URL's with double slashes have been cleaned up.

Fourth and finally: the menus have been rearranged a little to put the most useful stuff on the top.

Improving the use of PNGs

2005-12-31T01:05:00.000-05:00

I created a FAQ just to deal with all the PNG uploads I've been receiving. It should answer most of the questions that people have about using PNGs with Big Blue Saw. The most important thing to keep in mind is that a part made from a PNG isn't going to be as accurate as one made from a DXF.

Also, I realize that most people aren't going to read the instructions and will continue to upload files with antialiasing and transparency. So I've taken steps to correct Big Blue Saw's interpretation of these files. If you've tried uploading a PNG in the past couple days and have gotten lousy results, try again.

The Makezine Effect

2005-12-28T16:15:00.000-05:00

The Make Magazine blog linked to Big Blue Saw yesterday. The increased traffic was really hard on our poor web server. It's good to have that kind of attention, though.

Phillip Torrone, one of Make's editors, also contacted me about working more closely with Make in the near future. So look for more collaborations there soon. Also, he told me about an interesting website: Instructibles. It's a collection of interesting, do-it-yourself type projects.

I've made some tweaks to how PNGs are processed based upon the types of files that people have uploaded so far. This will be tweaked even further as more files are uploaded and I figure out what people are expecting. If you are trying to make a part from a PNG, here are a couple of quick tips until I get the help files done:

Use a white background

Use black for where you want the part to be

Don't outline; fill in the area where you want the material to be

Don't use antialiasing

Don't use alpha transparency

PNG images now supported

2005-12-27T00:47:00.000-05:00

I've just added support for PNG images. I'm really proud of this new feature, as it will allow even people who don't know how to use CAD software to start creating with Big Blue Saw. There are still a couple of quirks to work out over the next few weeks, and the help files will need to be updated, but this feature was much needed.

Also, I've put in a few more bug fixes, including one that was causing the DXF parser to go into an infinite loop and never allowing the user to see the results of an upload.

After reading Jennifer Laycock's Zero Dollars, a Little Talent and 30 Days, I started taking a look at my server logs to see what advertising was most effective. I'm still getting some traffic from the Make Magazine blog article from a while back. I came up with some interesting web log analyzis techniques and might write an article about it one of these days.

ATVQuadSquad

2005-12-23T02:07:00.000-05:00

The people over at ATVQuadSquad were impressed that I took time to track down a link. A thread on their message board had been sending me some traffic, so I thought I'd post over there.

I'm trying to keep up with what people are saying about the Big Blue Saw. I live and die by web traffic, so it's just good business.

Blog, rendering changes, advertising

2005-12-15T20:47:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed that this blog looks a little different now: I changed the header to show the Big Blue Saw logo. This will help me track readership for the blog.

I changed the way that uploaded files are rendered. Previously, some areas were being overwritten. Now, you can see every line in the original drawing.

Also, I modified the pricing estimator again, as I was miscalculating the cost of cutting a circle.

Finally, I've been playing around a little bit with Overture search ads. No sales from that yet.

IE Fixes and more

2005-12-09T00:26:00.000-05:00

I fixed a few problems with using Microsoft Internet Explorer with the site. Most were minor, but one bug made it very hard to log in.

Orders are starting to trickle in, and I had to change the pricing model to fit with what the manufacturing partners can handle. This means that some things will be more expensive, and some cheaper.

Also, I've been molding the business plan into shape based upon a few ideas from my collaborator in Luxembourg (I don't know if he wishes to be named at the moment).

Performance boost

2005-12-06T00:27:00.000-05:00

I rolled out some changes to help with performance problems when uploading large or complex files. This should help particularly when you upload a file traced from an image, as with Img2Cad or Autotrace.

More online help, new entity support, FAQ update

2005-11-30T03:40:00.000-05:00

When you upload a file that has problems, you now get a link to help right next to the error message.

Also, tiny areas that have errors like crossing lines will now be circled so that they're easier to see.

LWPOLYLINE support has been added, which should increase compatibility with a variety of programs, including Autotrace.

The FAQ on software has been updated to include links some conversion software so that users have an easier time getting their files in DXF format.

New FAQ up

2005-11-29T02:22:00.000-05:00

I just put up a new FAQ with a bunch of graphics that show the right way and the wrong way to make a CAD file for Big Blue Saw.

Link

2005-11-28T18:05:00.000-05:00

There's a thread over at CNCZone with some discussion of Big Blue Saw.

Ease of use

2005-11-27T03:21:00.000-05:00

My next few improvements to the website will focus on ease of use. For example, I'm about to roll out a change that will point the user in the direction of the FAQ if they upload a file that completely confuses the quoting software.

The site also needs to do a better job of correcting problems as they arise. For example, it may be able to merge overlapping areas, or delete crossing lines. I'll be thinking about how to best handle certain common situations.

It's also pretty clear that people don't really understand what to expect when uploading their DXF file. We've gotten quite a few DXF's that have multiple views, complex assemblies, and other things that we have no to make sense of right now. I need a way to make sure that it's clear right from the beginning what to expect.

Starting the Big Blue Saw blog

2005-11-26T23:57:00.000-05:00

I've decided to create a blog to help communicate changes to Big Blue Saw.