Our customers sometimes ask us what we recommend for a basic tool kit. We think about it, and then try to remember everything, and then recite a list off the top of our heads, which isn’t the best way to do it. So we decided to put our tool kits together, take some pictures and tell you a little about what we like. Because we like tools.

We’re starting today with Gareth’s setup. He describes this as the kit he would put together if he needed to work on either control or machinery, but didn’t know exactly what.

He’s got a great selection here. On the control side, he’s got the Fluke 117 multimeter, which has 2 nice features: The screen is backlit, so it’s great in a dark theater, and it also has an ammeter, for checking current. Also check out his probe assortment- they don’t take up a lot of room and they improve the quality of his life.

He also carries a full soldering kit with a mini Pana-Vise clamp. He’s tried to get by with the smaller (and cheaper) standalone irons, but when it comes to soldering encoder wires, a full setup is the way to go. It’s heavier, but Gareth decided over the years that the extra weight was worth it.

He’s got a couple of custom items, too. There’s a brake testing light, a couple of limit jumpers, a 24volt wall adapter for bypassing the Showstopper and even an Ethernet crossover adapter. With these, he can reduce the control down to the minimum to help troubleshoot.

In the lower right is a Gareth classic- the pipe-style vise grips. The ends work like regular grips and he can also grab pipe or (when it comes to that) machine shaft.

The orange bit case has a right angle driver with ratcheting 1/4″ & 5/16″ sockets so you can use with screw & allen bits or chuck up 1/4″ drive sockets. That little driver is a life saver when working in cramped machines where the last set screw is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Then there’s the usual assortment of wrenches, pliers, nippers, nut drivers, allen keys, and a flashlight.

Rounding out the kit is the red bin, which he keeps stocked with small mechanical parts like master links and keys.

That’s Gareth’s kit. But we want to know about what you guys keep around. Is there a special tool you can’t live without? We want to hear from you, and we want to see your setups. Take a picture, tell us what you got and email it to me at ian@creativeconners.com. If we get anything good, we’ll post it here. And who doesn’t like to look at tools?

2011 was certainly an exciting year in the history of Creative Conners. We’d like to take a moment and recap the high points of 2011 before moving on to 2012.

It was early summer when Gareth made the decision to expand the company. First order of business was a new shop space, which was found in historic Warren, RI, walking distance from Gareth’s front door. With 3300 square feet, dedicated manufacturing stations, an office and a break area, we now have everything we need to build the awesome gear that bears the CCI logo. We also have room to store our rental equipment, take on custom work and still have room for an energetic mid-sized dog to run wild.

The next big change at CCI was personnel. We added Royal Marty, Product Engineer in August and a full-time Sales Manager (yours truly) in September. Having more people around has really changed the way things operate here. More energy, more people for bouncing around new ideas and more capacity for quick turn-around jobs. It’s a good group of people.

During all this, we hired a marketing team, Tribal Vision, located in Providence, RI. They were great at defining and shaping the marketing goals for the company, consolidating the marketing efforts and bringing fresh branding to the company. But mostly they taught us how to craft our marketing message, something we don’t always think about, but should. During the expansion, they were definitely the fourth man in the shop.

We got our new website up in October. It’s hard to overstate how great the new site has been. Our customers have an easier time finding out about the products, our product line is presented in a clearer manner and it’s a lot easier to update the site.

Of course, we’re still building automation equipment, and business has been good. Besides our usual stable of software, controllers and machines, we now sell Starter and Add-On Kits for Pushsticks and Revolvers. We’ve also done some great custom work.

So, what do we have in store for 2012? At the top of Gareth’s list is the next version of Spikemark. It’s a big job and we’ll keep you up to date on the project as it moves forward. If you have any feature requests, now is the time to get your vote in by emailing me at ian@creativeconners.com.

Royal is starting the research and development for a Stagehand Remote. That’s a project that we’ve been talking about for a while, and now that we have someone like Royal in the fold, we’re going to give it the attention it deserves.

Thanks for staying in touch with us in 2011 and we promise to keep the posts coming in 2012. Happy New Year!

Things have been moving along pretty well here at the new shop, so we’d like update our blog readers on what we’ve been up to and what’s coming up in the next few weeks.

In October, we shipped new gear to Asolo Repertory Theater in Florida. They got a new winch, a refurbished winch and a control system. We also sent a control system with 2 Stagehand AC’s and an FX to Kansas City Rep. They’re a new client with CCI, so here’s a big “Welcome!”  We did some custom work for Mystic Scenic Studios, and shipped a couple of FX’s to Walled Lake Western High School, who are doing a chandelier trick for Phantom Of The Opera.

In the middle of the month, Gareth flew off to the Midwest to speak to the students at Purdue. Gareth always comes back from the talks with crazy energy after spending a whole day with super-smart and engaged students.

We also had a bunch of rentals, most notably Coastal Carolina University who rented a Revolver for the month to add to their existing inventory of CCI equipment.

We’ve got some good stuff coming up in November, too. Michigan State University has purchased their first control system. (Another big “Welcome!”)  We have more custom interactive exhibits to build with Mystic Scenic. And speaking of custom work, we’re going to be doing some cool stuff for Daedalus Design and Production in NYC as they tackle a new tour of Einstein On The Beach.

We sold our first Revolver Starter Kit to Two River Theater Company (Wow, 3rd big “Welcome!”) in NJ so that’s on the docket for early November. And lastly, we’re close to finalizing some orders with Syracuse Stage and Dallas Theatre Center that should fill out November quite well.

November is also the time for us to build more stock. We like to have a certain number of products sitting on the shelf, ready to go. It’s a more civilized way to build things and our customers are happy when we can ship ‘Same Day’.

Of course, there’s much going on at Creative Conners that’s not directly related to building awesome products for our awesome customers. Gareth has started rebuilding his inventory control software that keeps track of our parts, assemblies and products. Now that there are 3 of us in the shop, it needs to be a multi-user system, so Gareth is taking this opportunity to build something in his favorite programming language, Python.

Royal Marty, our new Product Engineer, has been bringing his dog George to work this week, so we are now a 4-mammal shop. We asked George to solder up some OEM boards for us, but we got that tilted-head quizzical look that I usually give Gareth when he asks me what my next blog post is going to be about.

In the marketing department, we had a good week, sending out our fancy new brochures to all of our current and prospective customers. If you don’t get one by mid-next week, it means you probably aren’t on our mailing list and you can fix that by dropping me a note at ian@creativeconners.com. Finally, next week we’re filming a video that will give newcomers a nice overview of the Creative Conners system. I’ll let you all know when the video gets posted.

That’s it for now. Thanks for listening!

Our first parts rack has landed in our new shop… (looks kinda lonely all by itself)