The Production Line - Tips and Ideas Inside

[Ben N]

Its pretty easy to work out who you're building for BTW, I wont say online though cause you mspainted it out for a reason I gather.

[Ben N]

Its pretty easy to work out who you're building for BTW, I wont say online though cause you mspainted it out for a reason I gather.

Ah, yeah, now I see. 

[Unbeliever]

The problem is the spammers spamming my forum.

Ahh, I see. Fair enough.

Maybe if I was more of a computer nerd, I could figure out a better way to do things...

Take it from me, it's just better not to be one. 

[Paul Marossy]

I had one more idea to make the ultimate jig: to add a lazy susan ball bearing base to it. Now I can spin it around freely without having to pick it up at all.   

[Paul Marossy]

And one more thing: a large drawer organizer works well for keeping things neat and organized while building. 

[Paul Marossy]

New development: a jig that securely holds eight 3PDT switches at a time for soldering the two connections on the switch itself. This goes much faster and is easier than doing this while it is in an enclosure.





It's made from some scrap wood and small aluminum angle pieces. It took about 30 minutes to make. It was worth the time and effort to me to build this as anything that makes building 30-40 pedals at a time less of a hassle is a welcome addition in my book.

[PRR]

Go into any sweatshop, from Fender to RCA-NASA to Gavin to China, you find similar jigs and layouts. Old tech books show a board with nails and notes so you can lay-up a complex wire-harness, terminate and tie, without excess motion or high-pay thinking. Henry Ford spent a lot of time setting up Model T assembly to be fast and easy.

You may not think of yourself as a "sweatshop", you may give the extra final effort that you don't get from $2/hour workers, but the basic building is tedious stuff and worth streamlining after the first couple units.

Thanks for showing the pedal jigs.

[Paul Marossy]

What prompted me to build a lot of these devices in the first place was because when I still had my very well paying consulting engineering job in Oct 2008, and my hours were cut the first time, I had to take on a second job to try and make up for lost income. Since I do these on a piecework basis, the faster I can get them done the better I feel about it when I look at how much I am making per hour of effort. This especially mattered when I would be at work for 9 hours and then have to come home and work for two or three hours soldering up guitar pedals. Then my hours were cut a second time in March 2009 and two weeks later I was laid off after being told that they weren't going to have to lay off anyone. I have been unemployed for nine months now and I don't see anything changing here locally for probably 18 months, if the whole US economy doesn't collapse before then. This means that I will have to keep building pedals for income.

Anyway, these things help me to be as absolutely as efficient as possible and to get them done as quickly as possible, which is a good thing as soldering guitar pedals for "a living" isn't really the most fun thing to do. But at least it's some kind of income, meager as it is. Now I get to "get my hands dirty" while making 15-20% of what I used to. Yay.

[G. Hoffman]

If I may make a philosophical point;

I don't care what you are making, if you are making a living making a bunch of any kind of widget (from a thread spool to a 747 jumbo jet), you need to stream line production any way that is practical.  We have several rooms covered with jigs and templates for our guitar models.  The idea of the "hand made" anything is a little odd.  I mean, how do you define "handmade."  Is it all hand tools?  Well, I can't think of anybody making guitars that way - though there are a couple guys who are kind of close.  Why?  Because if you try to do that, you starve.

If you are making one of something, then it just isn't worth it, but for making 10 or more, you need to start doing things like this.  You just have to.  At least, you do if you want to eat.


Gabriel

[Paul Marossy]

If I may make a philosophical point;

I don't care what you are making, if you are making a living making a bunch of any kind of widget (from a thread spool to a 747 jumbo jet), you need to stream line production any way that is practical.  We have several rooms covered with jigs and templates for our guitar models.  The idea of the "hand made" anything is a little odd.  I mean, how do you define "handmade."  Is it all hand tools?  Well, I can't think of anybody making guitars that way - though there are a couple guys who are kind of close.  Why?  Because if you try to do that, you starve.

If you are making one of something, then it just isn't worth it, but for making 10 or more, you need to start doing things like this.  You just have to.  At least, you do if you want to eat.


Gabriel

I agree 100%