Neither am I. My first message in this thread merely:

1. Gave hard numbers on the costs of building a frame in the UK from someone that recently built one as you said you didn't plan to ship frames outside the US/Canada and could only estimate at the cost of doing so in the UK. (Brief note: my number was based on materials for building a single tank that would be reduced buy bulk purchase of PVC pipe if building multiple.)

2. Providing my own experience of receiving people's plans to make shoddy makeshift frames or suspensions for tanks to underline your earlier safety warnings and went so far as to suggest Quadro that can easily be put together with no engineering knowledge that would be sturdy enough for the tanks you are willing to send over here without a frame that it is easily forseeable that people are going to want to try find a way to suspend. (Estimate for Quadro frame around £500-900 depending on whether or not people want to add panels for walls around frame).

Now you chose to post:


To condescendingly imply that my mechanical hand pull design wasn't in the same class as your IoT enabled device and that doing so would be "category error," and that the reason your prices were over 1000% higher for a complete tank was that "and no fancy shit," was in your words, "basically the difference in 4 words."

But given I was able to IoT enable it for £50.
Add various nozzle modes for £20.
Add a dunk tank style trigger but with cricket stumps instead of normal round target for another £25 (mostly cost of stumps).
That doesn't include the other mods such as the time delay Pythagorean Siphon with hose and pump or the Pie Slide mode I eventually got to work on it - which I don't have exact estimates for.

In the interests of a true and accurate record I had to call bullshit on the assertion that the lack of the "fancy shit" being "basically the difference," in terms of price.


Totally fair enough. Had you responded with this than claiming to be in a totally different category there wouldn't be any disagreement here. Totally agree that a lot of man hours going into these builds and whilst it is one thing building something for yourself but when you start building stuff for others you're providing a service which unless you are doing it for charity (and lets face it if we were to put our engineering skills to use charitably it would be on building gunge tanks) then in a capitalist society you're perfectly entitled to charge for that service. After all you are handing over your time to build something for someone else rather than use your hobby time building something else for yourself. And given that you are perfectly entitled to set the rate for your services at whatever the market rate based on where the equilibrium between how many you're willing to build and how much people are willing to pay for them is.

There's no shame as a craftsman charging what you think your time is worth the people in the market will determine whether they're willing to pay it or not.


Just to finish with this point on prices with something that also neatly circles back to the start of this message where I mention I too am not interested in picking a battle. When I was a hot-heat in my early twenties when I came across a number of arrogantly dismissive people that would claim x or y either couldn't be done or could only be done their way that I could see were wrong about it. When I picked a battle with them, I didn't battle with words words are cheap. I did so with actions. I would build something better than their thing for cheaper or prove how something they said couldn't be done and then I'd wipe the floor with them either in the marketplace or in a few occasions in a national competition. But back then I was just a smart-arse looking for external validation because he hadn't dealt with the abuse and neglect from his childhood.

But I've grown a lot since then and the truth is when it comes to engineering being adversarial is rarely productive. Engineering is often a collaborative endeavour and indeed the best way to get your prices lower in personal projects is often to consult other engineers and hobbyists to see if they have any ideas we may ourselves have overlooked or they know of an application in a field we're unfamiliar with that might benefit our project. (Hell even the bog standard build of the portable gunge tank I mentioned in the first post I've been able to potentially find an even better and potentially cheaper trigger mechanism, valve and container solution from consulting other engineers that isn't factored into the prices I quoted in that post).

As such looking for a battle is as futile in engineering as it really is in the rest of life. I came to this thread just to provide information that may have been of benefit (especially with regard to recommending the use of Quadro instead of whatever makeshift thing people in Europe might have done to suspend the tanks you were willing to sell them) for as I say engineering is often collaborative and I'd have been willing to try give further advice to try help come up with a cheaper design. But my willingness to give advice to help you find a cheaper build has evaporated over the course of this exchange. Not that I expect you would be open to listening to any of it whilst posing to know everything on the subject already.

With a mountain of other projects and no personal need to prove anything I'm happy to draw a line under this and never check back at this thread again having better stuff to do with my time as I expect you do to with a number of tank orders to build.

Good luck with them and the eventual pie device you plan on building.