Hi guys! just a quick update on the micro rulers. I'm about to uh, pack up the car and head on over to the mailing house to get all of the international orders out and I think we're ready to go almost. There's a few um issues which I'll talk about. I've got two boxes of micro rulers 82,000 rulers in packets of 100 like that.

so ah man, Unbelievable. 8 and half thousand of those. I've got the special TC tear proof envelopes which we'll take a look at. I've got five boxes of these uh, specially ordered from the US tear proof envelopes so that the rulers don't escape like what happened last time.

and I've also got some custom cut 1 mm card which I'm going to tape the rulers to and uh, nice real thick sort of. you know, doesn't bend that easy. In fact, it doesn't Bend as easily as the rulers do. so uh, I've got uh, a couple of boxes of three boxes of those so the car's half packed.

Take the rest of the stuff down, head on over to the mailing house and see if we can print on the envelopes. Now as you may know, we had a few issues. uh, sending these rulers I originally sent them uh to like 270 or something to Australian uh backers of the Ruler campaign and we had a few issues. The first issue was when I put them in standard envelopes like this.

there was that see that Gap when you seal it up. there's still that Gap in the end and that uh Gap happened to be big enough to allow these rulers to escape. um, unfortunately. so when I just had it loose in there, you know if they went upside down in the Sorting machine I guess then it could be there and then the momentum of that would just make the rulers slide out.

So um, that happened to many dozens of uh people unfortunately and they received an empty envelope which was silly and the other one was a simple um, tear through when they went through the mechanical machines. even when they were taped down I originally and when I sent the replacements I taped them inside there, put some tape on and they all got there. but uh, the other problem was when you seal these real easy to tear through I mean I'm putting no force on that at all and that's just torn and I've uh, tweeted some photos of you know, completely mangled envelopes just way. you know, it's just a very poor way to do it.

So yeah, if you tape them inside envelopes, you can get away with it, but it ends up all torn and mangled and everything else doesn't look very good at all. and they're probably going to flag that as you know as uh, a problem at the post office. So what I did is ordered these: uh Toc they're called um that's the DuPont Uh brand name. they're manufactured by Dupont and they're a synthetic fiber and you've probably uh seen these and they're tear proof envelop.

So um, what I've got is a pocket seal version which is an nend seal flap like that you just peel off the uh flap on the back and uh, so let's do that and it's got some really good gum on there. And so we solve the issue of sliding out like that and we can whack the rulers in there. And these are tear proof so even if you had it loose in there, we shouldn't be able to tear this. Let's give it a go.

Here we let's try it. How easy is that? To no see Now I'm putting a lot of force. I'm bending that ruler as far as I can go and I can't tear through that envelope. Now you can actually cut them fairly easily with a blade.

but as far as you know, um, a look at this. I'm putting all my force on that and I'm eventually able to tear it. But geez, you can see all the fibers in there just holding this in place. So basically these Toc envelopes are the duck's guts if you're sending anything that needs to stay inside the envelope.

and they were quite expensive and I couldn't get them in Australia at any form of reasonable price so I had to import from the US. But fantastic These TC envelopes. So that issues, um solved in terms of once, this thing, the gum seal is down, nothing is getting out. So I could actually send these loose in there and it probably wouldn't be a problem.

But so what I got is just some custom cut uh, cardboard uh, 99 mm X 210 which is like a third of an A4 uh sheet. And I'm going to, um, get the mail inh house to tape the rulers uh, down on the cardboard like this. and uh, if it's five, of course, I'll have uh, two stuck on the other side and three stuck on this side. I'm not exactly sure how they'll tape them I need to go there and uh, talk to them.

But anyway. um, so that should, uh, basically stop the momentum of the actual rulers inside. when you tape tape them together, five of them. There's a fair bit of mass in there, so when it goes through the through the machine, there's a lot of you know it can really shake around in there, so this just prevents that.

so we'll just go inside there like that. and yeah, it's still. it's still going to move around a little bit in there, but it takes out all that uh, sharp Mo momentum and also the sharp uh Corners as well. so that should get there intact.

There's absolutely no way those rulers can ES shape. So as long as you didn't goof up your address or your post office doesn't like it, for whatever reason, it should get there intact. So I'm pretty confident that this is going to work. I'm going to be uh, shipping out I think uh, just over 2,000 uh envelopes through the mail inhouse, uh to 2,000 International backers.

They're all going overseas, so you know, going through a lot of postage handling uh systems. but I think it's absolutely essential. It's worth the money to get these Toc envelopes to just absolutely nail the issue of any rulers escaping whatsoever. I Mean you know, 80 GSM paper even if you get like the thicker 100 GSM stuff really isn't going to cut it.

You can get uh, cardboard, um DL size envelopes as well, but even those I don't think they're going to cut it. nothing can beat this synthetic uh fiber Toc material I don't think. And by the way, the cost of the TC envelopes plus the custom cut mm board almost costs as much as to get the Uh rulers manufactured. Unbelievable.

or one ruler manufactured anyway. So yeah, just crazy. but it's worth it so that is. I Think by far the best way to send Pcbs through the post economically and ensure that they get there.

I Mean, if you really want to do it economically, you know, saving every last set. Yeah, you can use just a regular 80gsm envelope and tape tape them in inside of that. but yeah, no, it's just going to end up mangled. So sending a simple you know PCB ruler like this.

absolutely incredible took a lot longer than expected. There were quite a few issues involved with this and I learned a fair amount and hopefully um, that is uh, of benefit to other people who want to ship Pcbs. By far the best way to do it. Now the only other issue which remains to be solved, which I'll find out when we get to the mailing house.

Um, can we print on these envelopes Because there is the issue of of course printing the address, printing the return address, and also printing the postage paid. Australia Post uh thing up the top now. um I've got a stamp here and I have tried um, you know, printing on these things and uh, no, they do smudge a lot and even if you leave it there for quite some time, it doesn't seem to soak in. um, but these Dupont um say that these things are printable, but you do need the right specific type of ink.

So obviously uh, one of these stamps I was hoping you know the return address would be easy bang, you know, something like that. but um, anyway. uh so we have to put a trial in the mail in House's uh, inkjet printing machine. We have to put them through, see if it uh, prints okay and it doesn't smudge and things like that and if that's okay, then they'll be able to print everything.

It should be easy. The backup plan will be the stickers. the label stickers. So we'll print on the labels, whack them on as you saw, uh, previous.

L whack on a sticker for the um, return envelope. And we may even have to do regular stamps as well, but hopefully it won't come to that. We should be able to print on these things fingers crossed and all up. There's about 80 kilos worth of stuff, including the rules.

And there's like 37 kilos just in the 1 mm cardboard. Crazy. See you.