(00:10):
Hey, welcome to the shop and the very first episode of the inside T.REX TV show. If it's hard for you to hear me, it's because we're having a very busy day here at T.REX. We're getting ready for our big Black Friday sale. It's the most busiest week of the year except for next week. But for this this particular video, I wanna talk about our CNC machines. So let's come in here where it might be a little quieter.
(00:37):
When T.REX first started, we made all of our holsters, the old fashioned way by wrapping kydex around a blue gun, pressing it between foam and then crafting it on band saws and drill presses. We actually still make a lot of holsters that way, but we've moved the vast majority of our production onto ShopBot CNC machines. And that has helped us to really improve the production quality in two ways. The first is by being able to make our own forms. So we actually use the CNC machines to carve all of these out, and it enables us to make the shape of the mold perfect for what we're trying to accomplish. We build a 3d model of the gun and of the light. We're able to position the mounting hardware and just make the perfect shape for the holster that we're, we're actually trying to build. And that has helped things out considerably. But the other thing that has improved consistency and quality and speed quite a bit is actually drilling and cutting the holsters on the machine over here. So the ability to make identical cuts across a whole bunch of holsters really improved the consistency of the holsters, but it's also really helped us to nail down some quality as well. We're able to make sure that we're replicating the perfect hole placement and the perfect length and the perfect size of the holsters and able to get really good results. And let's come in here and look at this older machine where it's even a little quieter.
(02:11):
So I am not an expert in CNC machines at all. All of my experience have been with these shop bots here, and we've been very impressed with those. When originally doing the research and picking which ones to buy the ShopBot seemed to be the perfect mix of a really low cost machine that is very easy to set up and reconfigure and repair yourself, but also sturdy enough and strong enough and capable enough to do day in/day out production. And we've heard about a lot of folks that actually use these machines for round the clock shift work. And and we've been very impressed with how these have held up for the last few years.
(02:50):
Now, the other thing that we tried to figure out when we were picking our CNC machines a few years ago was do we want a small machine that takes up less room in the shop and can hold forms for one holster and we swap them in and out as we make different holsters during the day? And we opted for obviously a much bigger machine where we could keep maybe a dozen different holster types on the table at a time really quickly switch between them and make a whole day is worth of holsters without having to spend a lot of time fixturing and re-fixturing stuff on the table. And yes, it takes up way more room and it definitely makes a way bigger mess, but I think it's also saved us a lot of time, particularly when it comes to our custom work. You might be wondering how as a custom holster shop, can we be getting ready for Black Friday because we can't really begin making any of the orders until they come in. We make a ton of holsters to order that is the main bulk of our business.
(03:49):
So if you want a sidecar appendix rig for the Baretta, M9 with a shielded threaded barrel that is black and orange or purple and green, or some other crazy color combination with a custom shirt guard we'll make it for you. But obviously we can't stock those holsters in the hopes that someone will pick that crazy combination, but we are making Ragnarok holsters in advance because those only come in a few colors and we're starting to make quick ships in a few different color combinations. So getting all of our Ragneroks and quick ships made this week so that we don't have to worry about them next week when we're snowed under by a wave of Black Friday orders is kind of our only hope.
(04:42):
So that was the first of the inside T.REX videos. And we're hoping to make a bunch more talking about various behind the scenes things. And please let us know in the comments, if there's anything that you want to know about. If there's specific tools in the shop that you want to know more about or how we do certain things or how we developed certain products. And not just stuff in the shop either we're wanting to talk a little bit more about things that we're doing on the range, or even getting into behind the scenes of some of our video production. We can put in a lot of b-roll here. So…