411 Videos Since Inception

A new customer of ours found CNCROi.com doing a web search and happen to come across our blog, they were literally floored by how much content there is on this site so they asked me a few questions.

The first question they asked me are how many videos does CNCROi.com actually have on the site?

The answer is over 400, a small fraction of them are from my earlier business CNCKing.com but most are unique to THIS BUSINESS.

Of course, the follow-up to how many is HOW did you make so many videos?

I told them 400 is nothing, I have more than double that on my YouTube.com channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/i3ds) and the answer honestly is one video at a time… week after week, month after month and literally year after year.

As for other questions I answer quite often, I don’t really have a favorite video of all time, each was unique and some are better than others but if there is one that sticks out in my head even years down the road, it was the 3D animation I made of my Medieval Castle Walls.

That was the video from 9 years ago! Here’s the refresh at a higher resolution about 4 years later.

I am really starting to enjoy making longer videos, my first videos were less than a minute long and now I try to get to at least 10 minutes.

As for the longest video I’ve ever made, it was 43 minutes!

Something else I really enjoy doing is showing product tests, for instance, CNCROi.com makes lots of welding tags and other custom metal identification plates and customers always ask how they are affected by heat or abrasion.

Well, watching the above two videos, you know right away how durable our metal production is and I had fun making these videos because I honestly didn’t know the answer myself.

I’ve also made quite a few videos going through lots of questions I get regarding a specific process or material, it’s just easier to lump them all together though with my longer form videos, I also run through quickly some of the costs and benefits.

If I were to try to produce a thousand videos straight, I’d probably go nuts, but doing it piecemeal, a few a week over the period of a few years, this HUGE NUMBER actually becomes quite manageable.

The reason I originally got into making 3D animations for my old business was simply to help off-load tech support as I’d always have people asking me how to assemble certain pieces together in a foreign language that online translation systems do a very poor job of correctly translating.

After a few years, I started to experience a new problem with CNCKing.com, customers not believing that what I showed in 3D animations was actually possible in real life, so I started to run through all my hundreds of digital plans actually making it as proof.

Of course, around the end, I realized that selling digital files online had become a commodity and as CNC machines became more widespread, the skill level of people buying said machines dropped like a stone so the writing was on the wall to migrate all that wonderful content to CNCROi.com where it continues to live under our Physical Model Kits section under the Buy Online heading.

So as you see, there was no grand plan for getting things to the point where they are now with CNCROi.com, it was just problem solving over an extended period of time that just compounded.

When I began CNCROi.com, I faced a new problem though, like my other business, this one also had people who didn’t believe that I could do what I said I could do as the applications or production methods were foreign to them.

As such, I began to dive deeper and just make videos about how I make things, whether it’s engraving stones, making custom furniture or even wedding coasters and as previously, each video grew my library by +1 until I had over 400 made over the course of 4 years… which is 100 a year or roughly one new video every three and a half days.

With each video, I learned how to improve everything from production through to deliverables as many of the requests I get from customers on CNCROi.com are actually of processes I’ve never put together before.

The creativity of our customers really has no bounds, and that’s what makes everything fun in the shop, one day I might be etching 316 stainless steel plates with a tattoo…

… and the other making custom aerospace grade tool drawer organizers.

And then I have various side businesses that I use to try new ideas and see if there is a market for them.

I’ve been making videos for over 10 years now, all self-taught and recording things not covered under NDA and with permission from our customers, it has become second nature to set-up the camera and record all the fun and wonderful stuff we make here at CNCROi.com.

From the very simple stuff to more complex, it’s all the same to me, it’s just a matter of how long it takes to make said items.

So if you are looking at having something custom made and shipped right to your door, I hope you enjoyed the hours of video above and contact CNCROi.com with your very own project.