Eureka, with an oops

OK, so instead of ten days we have a post only an hour later. This is strange. I just thought I'd share. I figured out that the compression/expansion ratio of the bellows and the main cavity are not the same. Not like it ever freakin' mattered before today. But that is why air keeps trying to go around the bottom of the guide and gets drawn into the damper. Go figure. Anyway, understanding the problem is half the battle. The solution will follow. I guess I'll stay up late and design the solution so I can stop the bleeding in China.

Testing - Better late than never...

Crap! I have been toiling away on a test rig to develop the damping feature of the valve. The damping is one of the most critical features to make sure that the valve performs reliably in service, but was not part of the original prototype so the damper design was never tested. It seemed simple enough. I put in the necessary design elements. I even planned for the damping fluid to be misplaced when the valve was turned upside down and provided drain holes within the valve for the fluid to go back to where it was supposed to be. I didn't test it earlier for three (bad) reasons. 1) I was confident it would work. 2) I reasoned that even if it didn't work right off the bat, it would be easy to tweak on the production design 3) Building something representative was difficult due to the design. The parts I can machine do not match the molded parts.

All along I had planned to develop a test specification for the manufacturer to develop the damping performance. In order to do that, I reasoned that I would need a test rig that simulated many types of irrigation system installations (in terms of air entrainment...the source of all my grief). Having the rig would allow me to develop a "profile" of all the types of sputtering and spitting that my valves would have to tolerate. Then I would turn this profile into a specification and have the manufacturer duplicate the test rig to test the damping. That was the plan. Here's what really happened...so far.

I built the test rig. It didn't work. Even though I provided for multiple flow paths and all types of high points and drains so that air would be trapped, the ($300, 3 days to build) rig never produced anything like the sputtering I see when I turn on the sprinklers in my lawn. I realized this was due to the fact that simply trapping air was not enough. There was a delicate balance of slope vs spray head distribution in my lawn that caused the sprinklers to sputter, so just trapping "slugs" of air in my test rig didn't match what I saw in the lawn at all. After much trying, I decided the test rig was a bust and I would need a different approach for the damping tests. I took a standard sprinkler control valve and disabled the main valve so that it was acting only as a direct control solenoid valve (the pilot circuit, for those in the know). Then I opened up the solenoid flow path so that I could switch significant water flow on/off very rapidly. I hooked it up to a controlled leak and viola, instant pressure fluctuation. Anything I wanted, all electronically controlled. The test rig would still be useful for endurance testing, but I had my configurable test apparatus.

Then I set out to build a damped valve to test. If I left out the switch details, I could get a pretty good representation of the damper function. When I built it I was shocked. The damper didn't work worth a damn. The drain holes that I had so thoughtfully placed were acting as pressure equalization ports between two sections of the valve (no, not directly in line with the damper...I'm not that stupid) and causing air to sucked in by the damper piston. I made some improvement by opening some vents in the top (one mold change already...and the molds are almost done) but it still wasn't enough. The drain holes occasionally pulled air into the damper even if I filled the valve up with so much fluid that the holes were never uncovered. Did I say CRAP yet? The valve has to have air in it to compress or the whole concept of operating off of the main line pressure doesn't work. High tech dampers have the air and oil separated with a floating piston. Doing that would add considerable complexity to my design (more expensive mold changes). On the other hand, many dampers work just fine without a separator as long as they stay in the right orientation. I tested my damper without the (needed) drain holes and it works fine. I can't possibly ask the user to never turn the valve upside down, so I need the drain holes. So I decided to write. I have no solution. I have molds in process in China that should produce their first parts in about a week. Parts that I know now will not work as designed. If I tell them to stop, I'll have to get in line to get back in the queue. If I keep going, maybe I can salvage the tools in the development phase. I need a solution...and quick. CRAP!

When you want it real bad, you get it real bad

Well, its been a while since my last post and a lot has changed. The manufacturing is back on track and I should have product by early August. Yeah! Between now and then, there are a lot of hurdles, though. I need to make the product actually work from 12,000 miles away. So I need to write up a detailed development plan for the manufacturer to follow. Every single little step has to be planned and anticipated to the best of my ability to make this go smoothly. Such things as "these parts shoudl fit together like this" up to "this is the test rig and method that we will use to apply fluctuating water pressure to make sure the damping function is properly tuned" That is going to be a lot of work!

On the MWD side, things have been going well too. I decided that rather than re-writing a long proposal like the first time I would do a rough draft...sort of run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. So I rewrote the whole plan in about three pages, pulled budget numbers out of my rectal repository and submitted it. The rep loved it. He didn't want to change anything. He said he would attach it to my original and send it up to legal to be approved for funding. No formality needed. Ha! LOL. Now the plan calls for just a few subcontracted custom installs and professsional audits and I pay myself to write the reports. That way at least I get something for it. In the end, the most value will be the endorsement by MWD and future potential to market through them.

Which brings us to the title subject: Marketing. I got the website tuned up to meet the original intent. When I started on the website I wanted something quick and dirty, just so I could have a web presence as I started to meet people and pitch the product. So, that's what I got...quick and dirty. Now I've gotten feedback from honest friends who tell me the message isn't getting through. I also did a pitch at a local inventor's group meeting and half the room couldn't figure out what it was or what it did. Arrrggg!!!! Silly me. I thought that because I knew how it worked and the sprinkler retailers got it, that I would be able to convey the message to the average joe. WRONG! I now see that my marketing plan is sorely in need of MAJOR assistance...and fast. I called the marketing firm I hired to do the logo, website, etc and scheduled a meeting. We need a brainstorming/planning session. We need a coherent message, more graphics, end to end coverage, more, more, more. At the same time, I met with a friend of my old neighbor who designs marketing campaigns for major fortune 500 companies. He started going through the elements of a marketing plan that I should be considering and my eyes began to roll back as I saw the amount of work and $$ in what he was describing. The danger of not doing it is that a knockoff competitor who can afford it pushes me out of the market. That would suck. And, I still don't have a sales rep lined up and I should be pre-selling now. So, that's the major focus. If I'm not working on development plans its all about marketing....this is getting interesting!

Monopoly and Risk

Monopoly and Risk. Those are my two favorite board games. I like them best because they are almost entirely won and lost on strategy. More importantly, the strategy that you start with almost never works as planned because it is affected by luck and the moves of the other players. So, in the end, it is your strategy of reacting to shifting conditions that determines your success. Sometimes conditions call for you to be bold and take risks. Other times it is best to retreat and rebuild your strength or risk annihilation.

This business venture is very much like those games. I knew that when I started. That means that I could not have predicted with any certainty how things would turn out and accepted that. For a while, things seemed to be going my way. I had great hope in the MWD grant. I had a solid source of supply in my friend with the China manufacturing partner. I had chosen a marketing company that made awesome graphic designs for my logo and website early on, and best of all, the southwest is experiencing a prolonged drought that has led to water rationing. What could be better?....oh, how things change.

I finally got to discuss the funding of my grant with the MWD rep a few days ago. MWD likes my product (even though they don't claim to understand what it does ??!!??!) but they can not / will not fund anything except a study to document the water savings. So, that means that they won't help with actually developing the product, marketing and getting it into consumer's hands. That's up to me. Worse, I have to re-write my proposal around the things they will fund to even move forward. This after I spent about 3 weeks straight researching and writing the first one. Time that could have been spent completing the models sooner to get manufacturing going in China. Arrggg.

Oh, yeah, the manufacturing. As time goes on in a business relationship, like any relationship, you get to know the people you are dealing with much better. My friend, who I still trust and respect immensely, assured me that we could get molds made quickly and would have product in only a few months from when we started. I think that is true for products that have a sense of urgency with the manufacturer. My products, on the other hand, are just a small project that fits in wherever it can and is pushed by a very laid back group that have no vested interest in the schedule. So, I am constantly frustrated by the lack of attention to my product and have failed to get samples of the materials that I asked for about seven times. After all of that, I still have no better option at this point and must simply work to make the best of it.

Then there's the marketing. As I said, I have been very happy with all of the graphic design they have provided. Now we are moving ahead on the website. The website they promised would be done over a week ago. I finally got a test to look at. I'm appalled. Its awful. The whole thing looks like some sort of blogger site with no product focus and hidden links to get to the core selling information. Ahhhhh!!! Now I have to spend hours typing up a whole laundry list of changes that need to happen, will obviously cost more time and wait and see if they start squealing about cost. And I still don't have the site!

But all will work out fine, because the drought will drive customers to my project, right? So I said to my kids the other day "what would really suck would be if by the time my product got finished the drought ended and we had record rainfall". A calculated risk for sure. So, guess what was in the paper this morning. El Nino. The little boy who brings warm water to the equatorial Pacific and causes heavy rainfall in the southwest. The forecasters don't agree yet, but there is hope (not ME) that we may be heading into an El Nino year. Fantastic!