Hey guys, I’m excited to share that we are now carrying OEM replacement carbon brushes in our store! If you have reduced or intermittent power and your router, replacement brushes can bring back performance levels in your router.

As more customers use their LongMills for daily production use, we’ve seen more customers replace the brushes in their motors from constant use. Although for most customers, the need to replace the brushes will be extremely low, since they do last a very long time (we have some with 1000+ hours that still have life in them, more than what most people use their machine in 1-2 years), in a high production setting, I can see that there is a small subset of people could save time and money by replacing brushes versus the whole router itself.

At Sienci Labs, we try to have as many spare and maintenance parts available in our store so that customers can make sure that their machines run for many years to come. We also provide open source documentation and drawings, as well on the product pages if applicable, if customers need to source parts locally. If there are any other products or parts you feel like we should be offering, please feel free to reach out!

Just last week we posted a video where Jason covers the ins and outs of our online resources that we’ve continued to put together over the years. I just wanted to highlight this video and talk bit more about why this is so important to us, and you as the user and community.

The resources pages has a single fundamental goal which is to encompass all of the information one may want to or need to know about our products. This includes the LongMill, the LaserBeam, all of our accessories, and gSender software. In essence we wanted to make it so that if a meteor fell on our office and all of the customer support team perished, our users would still have no problems assembling, using, and troubleshooting our products.

Probably the most important reason for these resources to exist is simply to help you, the user, to use the products we create. Many of our products require assembly, instructions, or additional guidelines to use and enjoy. Additionally, CNCing as a hobby in general comes with many things for a new user to learn, such as choosing bits, workholding, dust collection, and more. The resources contain information and guides on ALL OF THOSE THINGS.

Here are some things you can find in the resources pages:

• What a spindle is and information on setting one up with the LongMill
• How to set up an IOT relay
• Open source design files, gerber files, CAD, and BOMs for many of our products and accessories
• Speeds and feeds for our end mills
• Demo projects and files
• A wizard to help you choose which software to use with the LongMill

You can even search topics by keyword!

I’m not kidding when I say the resources just about covers everything you need to know, and will want to know. One of the main strategies in our resource development is to continually cross reference our resources from the questions that our community asks to make sure that we cover all of our bases.

This includes basic topics, as well as just about any type of troubleshooting that one can do for the LongMill and all of our other products. Although I don’t answer technical tickets and questions that often anymore (we have the rest of the engineers and our customer support team to help out with that now, thank goodness), I read every single ticket that comes in. I do this because:

• It keeps me in the loop for any issues that may be production or quality related, such as a faulty part
• It lets me update our CNC Issues and Fixes page whenever I see a new problem

Let me tell you, the CNC Issues and Fixes page actually covers more than 99% of the problems that LongMill users send in technical tickets for. Additionally, I’ve also included a link to an article I recently wrote that talks about common misconceptions about machine issues and some troubleshooting tips. Frankly, if people listened to what we had to say about troubleshooting their machines versus strangers, albeit very helpful and well meaning strangers, on the internet, it would save a lot of time for users to diagnose their machines. I am almost certain that if people looked at this Issues and Fixes page and actually went through to check the recommended solutions, we would have nearly zero troubleshooting tickets.

In fact, when training new customer support staff, we typically just get them to read over our resources so they get familiar with everything, and then use that as a starting point for helping customers.

So it turns out, the truly challenging part of making the resources isn’t putting together the information itself, but actually getting people to read it! And that is one of the reasons why Jason put out a video to help promote the resources site.

How our resources fits into our business model

One really important thing to know is that CNC support is a huge part of what people pay for when they buy any CNC machine. The technical support, troubleshooting calls, and customer service alone can account for 20% or more of the actual cost of the purchase price. In essence, anytime you ask for help, it’s coming out of your own pocket!

So you can see that reducing the human interaction time and cost means being able to pass those savings along to you. That’s why I strongly recommend that people check out our resources, since it saves the company money and saves you time. In this way, we can keep making affordable hardware while making sure we take care of our users.

As our company grows and scales, the customer service burden will continue to grow and may potentially be a bottleneck in our development. Additionally, while we currently have a very strong reputation for amazing customer service, it becomes more and more difficult to hold the same level of standard as a company grows larger. This is why investing in our online, self help resources, as well as making sure everyone is using it is so important for the long term.

It’s been challenging understanding the psyche of our users and how they use and navigate our resources, and I think there is still a long ways to go until we get to the point where everyone’s adopted using it. We’re exploring a couple different things, such as turning more of the resources into video content or creating an e-book, and hopefully a combination of these things will continue to improve engagement with our vast and growing resources.

Alas, thank you for reading this article, and happy making!

Hey everyone. This is an update on how things are looking for the customs situation for certain LongMill orders coming into the US. Over the last few weeks, some LongMill shipments going to the US have been held at the border requiring customer SSN or TIN numbers to clear.

If you are in the US with a LongMill on the way, please read this post carefully.

This post is to inform everyone about the situation, what to expect, what to do, and what we’re working on to fix the process.

What is going on?

Due to changes in the shipping and customs processes implemented by the US Customs and Border Protection Services earlier this year, some shipments for the LongMill are getting held up at the border.

Why are shipments getting held up?

There are currently two main reasons why shipments are getting held up.

First is the high-value nature of some of the shipments containing LongMills. This article (https://help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-314?language=en_US) contains information about the clearance of shipments. While we continue to cover the cost of duties and taxes directly, customers still need to provide this information.

Second is the implementation of Section 301 Articles of China. While most of our products are made in Canada, some items are made in China. There is currently a trade war between China and the US, which means that the US will identify and apply duties to Chinese-origin items separately. This means that these parts are more likely to get flagged as well. We automatically provide the correct data for customs services, but sometimes this can require additional processing to complete.

What do you need to do?

If we need your SSN or TIN number, we may:

• Contact you by phone or email
• UPS will contact you by phone or email

If you want to be proactive, you can contact UPS by day@UPS.com (please cc orders@sienci.com) or calling the UPS national warehouse at 313-967-0457 and providing them with tracking number as well as your SSN# or Tax ID #.
If you do not feel comfortable with providing your SSN and do not have a Tax ID number you can get a free tax ID number at: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/apply-for-an-employer-identification-number-ein-online

Alternatively, you can send us an email or contact us with your details directly and we will forward them to the right place.

If you see that your item is in the warehouse, please contact us ASAP.

If we don’t receive a response within 10 days, we may need to re-ship your items.

What else are we doing to address this?

There are currently several things we are doing to reduce the friction in sending orders to the US. Some of these we are implementing right away, while some things are longer-term plans that may take several weeks or months. These include:

• Updating our customs form to provide more information and mitigate the chances that the order will be held up at the border.
• Proactively contacting customers and placing notices for people to follow to get additional information
• Creating a US entity/corporation to help assist with the transfer of goods between the US and Canada
• Establishing a system for communication between us and customs clearance to provide the information more quickly.

With over 60 shipments currently affected, we are working on this as quickly as possible. However, in the meantime, it is likely we will need the co-operation of our customers to help work with customs to get everyone’s orders to them!