To make a product that can stack up against products produced by established companies you need to allow yourself to only attempt those aspects of the build that you feel confident of doing and doing well. I make sure I just do the design and assembly. I leave laser cutting, welding, parts machining and powder coating to the professionals.

You need to write a checklist to yourself;

• Would you buy your own product?
• If not, why?
• Don’t cut corners on quality
• Make sure the product looks and works the way it should
• If you put your product next to the competition, does it stack up?
• Customers will be critical, don’t give them a reason for a poor review
• The internet has levelled the playing field for big and small businesses, it has also opened up all products for review and ridicule
• A poor review can hurt your product
• Use quality components
• Above all – YOU NEED TO MAKE A PROFIT

The main components of the drum vacuum, my main product, are shown in the following pages and the steps involved to get it built. The first step is to get the main steel disc laser cut. Originally, when first designing a new product, I use a piece of cardboard to make a blank of the disc and then I also use cardboard to make up all the other parts to see if they fit and there are any issues. Once I’m sure that I have the disc drawing correct I use my publishing design program to draw the disc with all the cut holes, widths, spaces, dimensions etc to hand over to the 3D Cad Cam expert.