Solarbotics is a small Canadian small-business, and the latest round of US tariffs and fees have made shipping to US destinations difficult to calculate correctly. We have made the hard decision to disabled all shipping to the United States though our website.

The recent 50% Section 338 tariff affects our kits and other locally made products, while the additional 10%-12.5% Section 301 Forced Labor tariff affects most everything else in our inventory.

Shipping via UPS has resulted in our customers receiving large clearing invoices resulting in some customers refusing their shipments. Resulting in Solarbotics receiving unexpected bills and lost product. However, when shipping via UPS we do not charge nor collect this tariff, as that is applied entirely by the US Government and has to be paid for by the customer.

We use a 3rd party shipper so we could ship DDP (Delivery Duties Paid) which worked well, but the new tariffs are not being correctly calculated and applied to website orders, resulting in wildly inaccurate shipping/clearing/tariff quotations.

If you are in the USA, and still would like to buy from us, please send us an email at: [email protected]. We would be happy to assist you calculating the most up-to-date shipping and DDP Costs via our 3rd party shipper.

The United States has historically been a healthy part of our international business, but until we have a solution to accommodate these tariff changes, US customers will have to contact us direction to place an order.

Thank you for your support over the years.
The Solarbotics Team

Bringing more value to you, we’ve added a 3rd Party shipping option!

Traditionally, you get better rates from the courier companies by shipping more. Not shipping much? Expect to pay more. BUT with the advent of small “last-mile” delivery companies leveraging their agility, they can offer more competitive rates to smaller companies like ourselves, which we’re able to offer you!

One of the major hurdles in facing off against the large online vendors is finding a cost-effective way to ship materials.

Available for both US and Canadian destinations, you can choose to have your order delivered “last-mile” via Canada Post or USPS, or by 3rd party for even more value. Our US-bound destinations will have the appropriate CUSMA/USCMA paperwork already in-place. Keep in mind not all our products are CUSMA/USCMA eligible, so there still may be tariffs applied to those items.

Watching pallet-jacks moving a bazillion units of filament through snow is a Canadian thing. Well, for us at least. Now that our warehouse is restocked, and with our new shipment, comes new colors!

eSun BASIC

The eSun basic formulations are just that – simplified and less expensive. Ideal for lower-speed printing not needing the qualities the full eSun PLA+ formulations offer.

eSun Silks & Silk-Magic

The silks lineup offers such a nice sheen and finish to a print.

eSun New PLA & Chemistries

eSun simple keeps increasing the number of colors available. Here’s what we’ve selected to add to our inventory. Oh, and a new “Luminous Orange” (aka: Glow-in-the-Dark), and Carbon-fiber black!

AHA! We’ve found the CSS bug that made the mobile-experience fail on the menu pulldown. All better now!

Tis the season to reap what we’ve sown, and in that spirit, here’s what we’ve been doing with our summer students this year, fulfilling the following tasks:

Incorporating Active-Tech Calgary Store Inventory

This has been a long-desired project coming to (partial) completion, bringing the inventory from our physical store Active Tech Calgary online. This has been a nebulous task, needing us to document every item carried in the store with photos, dimensions, and weights (generated by a previous summer-student project, the Raspberry-Pi powered “Camstation”).

We’ve been able to bring online the gist of the inventory usually available in-store via the “Item Availability” search feature on our website. Although some items can be purchased online and in-store, we are unable to bring every item online presently. There are literally a minimum of 14 parameters that have to be filled-in to bring a product online. While we prioritize this, we’re doing a blanket “Here’s what we have” update, so at least it’s indexed and searchable. This more than doubles the product listings online!

Website Refresh

We’ve refreshed our website installation, as our previous commercial web developers efforts did not give us optimal performance. That meant shifting some background infrastructure, but also let us start with a clean, quick database. The performance should be noticeable!

Left to do is bring in the support documentation (PDFs, support code, etc) to each product. If you need something sooner than later, email us and we’ll send it directly to you.

More background optimizations are in the works; stay tuned!

Some of our favorite vendors reduced their offerings in thermal paste, so we searched out replacement inventory. We came across GD-2 being reviewed as a cost-effective alternative to more premium thermal pastes. So we’ve brought in some stock in 1, 7 and 15gram volumes.

At 7.5W/MK, it’s almost twice as effective as our budget thermal paste.

Presently, it’s only available in-store at Active-Tech Calgary.

Let’s play “Spot the differences”!

We received some new inventory, and one of these things …was not like the other (Sesame alumni, we are!). FYI, here are some differences between the K1 series of hot-ends. I don’t believe them to be “OMG!” differences, but just worth noting. We’ve had good results with both styles, but of course the red-sock version is preferred.

Of course, neither are of the latest Creality “Unicorn” technology, which you /can/ upgrade your older K1 to, but we’ve had consistently good results with this hotend revision.

Items might not be on the website yet, but they are in-store at Active-Tech Calgary.

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is … well, let’s just say with the Autumn comes planning for the the holiday building-season. We’re happy to announce these recent arrivals from eSun filaments and Creality3D printers. Amongst our many cases we’ve recently received, we got some new things to play with. In no particular order of funkiness:

eTwinkle Rainbow! (a.k.a.: Unicorn Sparklebarf)

If that “My Little Pony” Unicorn ever had an all-weekend bender, it may result in a color blend like this. It’s definitely a most intense blend of colors and sparkles. If you’re not sure what color to use, this is the one.

eTwinkle Silver

For a more … tasteful print than our first selection, you may consider the Silver flecked variant in the eTwinkle lineup. Must more refined in nature. Just screams to be used in a holiday ornament.

Silk Magic – Dual-color Red and Blue

I was introduced to “Shot Silk” when I was a kid by my eldest sibling. My young ears though she said “Shocked Silk”. After all, what would you call something that shifted weirdly from one color to another depending the angle you looked at it? In any case, eSun has taken advantage of the low-mixing characteristics of PLA plastic and developed a way to co-extrude two colors side-by side, which really does look striking.

Silk Magic – Dual-color Green and Blue

Similar to the above Green & Blue, but with a more police-esque color scheme. Mid-shift, it turns almost purple. Weird, but true.

Silk Magic – Dual-color Gold and Silver

Again like the rest, but with a very nice metallic gold and silver scheme. Another holiday favorite.

Light-Weight Foaming ePLA – Black

And…something very different. This stuff is making waves in the model aircraft and cosplay communities. This stuff expands like whipping cream out of the nozzle, then solidifies into a solid foam! It’s wack. We can’t wait to put it to use!

Light-Weight Foaming ePLA – Natural

Just like the other stuff, but in a neutral non-colored chemistry. Take a look at the datasheet on the page – the amount of foaming is controlled by your speed and temperature settings.

3D Printer – The Creality CR10 Smart Pro

Yeah, we’re on a bit of a 3D-printing-related kick today. We also have the new CR10 Smart Pro in stock. It’s a pretty polished unit, with built-in networking and video. Honestly though – not completely sold on the “Walled Garden” of having Creality talk to the cloud for my printing (albeit is pretty decent). I’m hoping for a community edition firmware that lets me have more direct control like Octoprint allows.

As the crisis continues, we received more and more email notices from suppliers & vendors offering us “assistance” in this “time of need”.

• From Ernie Johannson, Group head of North American Personal & Business Banking, BMO Financial Group (AKA: Bank of Montreal)?
  An email, titled “We’re here to help during COVID-19“, with a nondescript mention of a “Relief Program for those impacted”, which requires going to a generic “contact-us” page with no real explanation of what they’d do for us.How about just waving some fees for a few months. Business is down – it’d be nice to not have to pay credit-card fees for a few months. Or how about a break on the line-of-credit? Or even some debt-FORGIVENESS.  Something real, that doesn’t require my having to entertain you like a dancing monkey? Because I do remember all the times CBC reported “…another record-breaking profit report this quarter from the Bank of Montreal / Royal Bank / CIBC…”. You’ve also restricted hours, making it even harder for me to take care of our banking (and you can’t get change via your mobile app). Thanks, Ernie.

• From our accounting software provider, Intuit Quickbooks? An email titled “Help your business adapt in uncertain times” where they’ve put up $500k directly to “GoFundMe”, with an additional $500k for their employees to use toward “GoFundMe” campaigns, suggesting we can set up our own “GoFundMe” to solicit help.Really, over 25+ years using your subscription service (presently at $330/mo) , you’re “helping” by working with a 3rd party (which will take their slice) and making me dance and compete for attention and some assistance? How about just stop the billing for 3 months? That would be SUCH a nice gesture, and would make a difference. Your email footer tastes worse than yesterday’s coffee.
  <edit: Our Accountant has engaged them on support chat and managed to get 20% off for the next 12 months. It’s a start, but it’s the next 3 months are going to be the biggest challenge>

• New: From Moneris, our credit-card purchaser? “Helping Your Business during COVID-19 Restrictions”. Here’s an offer to make it easier to “pivot your business from accepting in-store payments”. An eCommerce 60-day setup, account & fee waver (worth at least $165+/mo and $199 setup).GREAT! We’d love to offer online-debit card access, and catch a break on some fees. But as we are an existing account (and again, as a long-time client), they’re unwilling to offer it to an existing business wanting to expand their service offerings. Sounds like a great way to convince brick & mortar stores to get a new online account, after which Moneris has a new additional revenue stream.

I am so TIRED of hearing about this ineffectual “help” coming from companies that have reported huge profits over the last 5 years. It’s time to step up and act like humans, and volunteer to help your customers & clients.  Don’t make us jump through more hoops. We’re already stressed and overloaded. I’m way too busy trying to keep our small business afloat and keeping what staff we have left employed to play these games. Corporations may be persons under the law, but some certainly have more heart than others.

In contrast, what are we getting from the small companies we deal with LOCALLY?

• Our local printer-leasing company Zone-3 have volunteered to stop the monthly billing on our industrial printer.
• Our local office cleaner (Olivia, a Jan-Pro contractor) has offered to work with us if to adjust our services we need to.

A sincere thank-you to our fellow small businesses that are reaching out to us with real offers of help.

Stay safe,
Dave Hrynkiw
President Solarbotics & Active Tech Calgary

So why do we suddenly have over 100 kinds of fuse for the website? It’s one of the easier products for us to bring across from our Active Tech Calgary store location into our website. Start with the easy stuff, then ramp up. Increase power gradually, so you don’t blow a… well you know…

Last summer during a Solarbotics Robotics for Educators session, one of the teachers noted something about many of the mainstream robotics and electronics learning platforms commonly used in classrooms. He said that those platforms suffered from the Black Box Effect. This effect was where the “black boxes,” the controllers, were plugged into the computer and worked… like magic.

The hacker community knows it isn’t magic, but the question posed was how do we introduce students to this level of technology?

This is where the SeeedStudio’s Grove system of electronics comes in. There aren’t any fancy enclosures to obstruct your view of the components that make the electronic systems tick while maintaining a fairly robust connection method to make assembly quick and almost error free. As proven as the system is, teachers had to develop their own resources around the system, and continually scour the Grove Wiki for improvements to their documentation and sample code.

To address this deficiency, we’ve developed The Solarbotics’ Grove Education Bundle which is a fully functional Robotics, Programming and Electronics class developed with junior high and middle school student in mind. Solarbotics produces this in conjunction Mr. Mitch Way of Nelson Mandela High School – a practicing Robotics teacher in Calgary, Alberta. It differs from traditional “How To” guides on Arduino by being written by a teacher for teachers and home educators who are new to Robotics. This bundle lays out a full series of lessons complete with:

• Slides presentations
• Self-reflection guide
• An assessment guide

The assessment guide has been aligned with the new Alberta Career and Technology Foundations (CTF) curriculum and draws heavily upon formative, competency based assessment. Any teacher can be a hero at staff meetings when you can use all of those buzz-words in a single sentence. The complete Teacher Guide includes:

• The lesson plan guide
• Corresponding online slideshows
• A self-reflection booklet for students to record their learning
• An assessment guide.

Slideshow example above

The lessons are designed to be used with the Grove system of electronics and the Solarbotics Sketchboard Uno Arduino-compatible as the microcontroller. The lessons begin as a very structured guide to programming concepts such as:

• Binary communication using table tennis paddles
• Pseudocode by designing an automatic dog feeder
• Design Process focusing on innovative coffee cups

Through the lessons, students will learn how to actually code an Arduino using proper conventions and methods in order to avoid much of the frustration often found in young programmers.

What fun is electronics knowledge if you can’t apply it. To that end, the course concludes by having students branch out into either Maker or Passion projects where they will tackle and solve real world problems with what they’ve learned.

In order to give you the needed flexibility to suit your classroom needs, we’ve developed two bundles – Basic and Expanded.

Basic Lab Bundle Includes:

– Teacher’s Guide download, including the lesson plan guide, the corresponding online slideshows, a self-reflection booklet for students to record their learning, and an assessment guide
– 4x Grove – Starter Kit for Arduino
– 4x The Solarbotics SketchBoard
– 4x USB-A to Micro-USB Cable
– 4x GM3 Gear Motor
– 1x Male-Male Jumper Wire Kit

Expanded Lab Bundle Includes:

– Teacher’s Guide download, including the lesson plan guide, the corresponding online slideshows, a self-reflection booklet for students to record their learning, and an assessment guide
– 4x Grove – Starter Kit for Arduino
– 4x The Solarbotics SketchBoard
– 4x USB-A to Micro-USB Cable
– 4x GM3 Gear Motor
– 1x Male-Male Jumper Wire Kit
– 1x Grove Ultrasonic Ranger
– 2x Grove Tilt Switch
– 2x Grove LED Bar
– 1x Grove Moisture Sensor
– 1x Grove Temperature and Humidity Sensor
– 1x Grove I2C Touch Sensor
– 1x ARDX Plastic Tool Case
– 2x Slide Potentiometer

For more information on the bundles, email [email protected]