What a month. Starts in December with the masterboard in my large CNC lathe blowing out. About 20 hours of my time, 10 hours on the cell phone (well, the school pays my overages because they will not let me have a phone in my shop, something about the "shop kids being untrustworthy") $600.00 to figure that out when the repair tech comes in and does everything I did and documented with pics, times, and everything. Probably 3800 to replace. May just junk the big old POS, seems it wants to kill me anyway - heck, moving it in broke my leg, the turrett spins way too fast, the programming is backwards, and it has been one problem after another, and it scares the hell out of the kids whn the turrett indexes (I actually love that ground shaking clunk and thud). Anyone want a 8900 pound boat anchor????????? Will have a decision on Jan 27th.
THEN, my prized Emco F1 trainer mill that blew a control five years back, rebuilt and perfected, new control, and a post procesor that is bomb proof. All but for a little cumbersome thing tht is piddly....Milling an item I had milled about 1000 times before for a production job in the shop. Aluminum ring 3.400 diameter x 1/2 wll thickness. Boring job, the machine starts to step over in the Y axis, I now have a stepped out egg shape. Seems the ball screw unloaded about 20 little balls out the screw end, the set-up student decided NOT to move the vise back that 1/2 inch the set-up sheet, pics, and big red print and engraved line on the table mark out the job an vise loc. $#@! I should have known to check this out!!!!!! he has broken up with his gilfriend this week....... Fixed it, but then the fix also entailed taking apart the entire mcahine all said and done..... The old ball screw coupling to the stepper had a 1 1/4 diamter brass coupler for "dampening", and when i designed this, I used 5-40 cap screws for the clamping - of course the heads stripped out, and of course they wre in about th hardest to reach part of the machine - had to make a special wrench to put them in - long gone and lost by now...... Finally go that out, time to make a new coupling. Got the screw fixed, I now know how to preload and re-load ball screws.....
Got two new CNC Mills - trainer size, but hefty enough to be respectable and real fast anway so tooling used right and speeds an feeds make these work and overcome lack of HP, thought I had the world by the brass ones. The specs call for PII 350 computers and Win 98 SE to drive the machine, of which I have a few extra. Seems they upgraded the machine computer specs to PIV 2.0 Gig and WIN XP Pro. I have three computers coming, but hoped to replace the 350's with these. Right now I have two beautiful machines sitting idle waiting for SOMEBODY else to get the computers in - seems though I have built computers for 12 years and maintained 17 in my shop, I now have to go through some pimply faced fresh from technical school nerd who studied CAD for a 10 hour class but never ran a machine but for a hand drill in dads shop (probably with dads hands on his) to buy me pre sofware-loaded off the shelf computers (yo dude, a DELL!!!!), and he has to do all the software loading and such for the entire school district - passworded us all OUT - speaking about job protection. Passworded all of out but me, for he got the word that I tend to get real ugly when someone touches my computers, and I have big noisey machines and a thousand acres of woods behind my shop, and a real crappy attitude some days - like this month. Showed him the CNC mills, and he asked if they were some new type of table saw....... Probably thinks a mechanical engineer is the one who drives the train and blows the horn.
To top it off. I was working in the shop this evening, figuring out the CNC machines I just bought would never run on my 350's - maybe if I load XP, now have to buy that and wait for "Elwood" to load it on (MY rosie red cheeks I will). Enough of this I figure after three hours of watching Windows 2000 lock up, and the tech at the machine place (who has actually been extremely helpful, sympathetic, and wants this to work for me on the lower units since he wrote the specs, and actually ran the machines protos on 350's) has long since gone home - kind like I should have. well, I finall have enough. Go to wash my hands of the day, and from my shirt pocket falls my beautiful never used but to load drivers off the net and files from other computers this very day - day one in its wonderul life, for it has been the ONLY THING to work right....the little thumb drive falls into the hand sink. Thought I got it in time, but the wet spot in my shirt pocket, and the neat little sloshing noise that the drive makes when I give it a little shake tell me otherwise.
heck, at his point, I was afraid to drive the mile home...... Made it without incident.....at least one thing worked right, but #$%@ I left my cell phone by the machines back at work......
Even the students were nutso this week......
Rolling Rock and Sams, take me away.......
[This message has been edited by spope14 (edited 01-07-2005).]
THEN, my prized Emco F1 trainer mill that blew a control five years back, rebuilt and perfected, new control, and a post procesor that is bomb proof. All but for a little cumbersome thing tht is piddly....Milling an item I had milled about 1000 times before for a production job in the shop. Aluminum ring 3.400 diameter x 1/2 wll thickness. Boring job, the machine starts to step over in the Y axis, I now have a stepped out egg shape. Seems the ball screw unloaded about 20 little balls out the screw end, the set-up student decided NOT to move the vise back that 1/2 inch the set-up sheet, pics, and big red print and engraved line on the table mark out the job an vise loc. $#@! I should have known to check this out!!!!!! he has broken up with his gilfriend this week....... Fixed it, but then the fix also entailed taking apart the entire mcahine all said and done..... The old ball screw coupling to the stepper had a 1 1/4 diamter brass coupler for "dampening", and when i designed this, I used 5-40 cap screws for the clamping - of course the heads stripped out, and of course they wre in about th hardest to reach part of the machine - had to make a special wrench to put them in - long gone and lost by now...... Finally go that out, time to make a new coupling. Got the screw fixed, I now know how to preload and re-load ball screws.....
Got two new CNC Mills - trainer size, but hefty enough to be respectable and real fast anway so tooling used right and speeds an feeds make these work and overcome lack of HP, thought I had the world by the brass ones. The specs call for PII 350 computers and Win 98 SE to drive the machine, of which I have a few extra. Seems they upgraded the machine computer specs to PIV 2.0 Gig and WIN XP Pro. I have three computers coming, but hoped to replace the 350's with these. Right now I have two beautiful machines sitting idle waiting for SOMEBODY else to get the computers in - seems though I have built computers for 12 years and maintained 17 in my shop, I now have to go through some pimply faced fresh from technical school nerd who studied CAD for a 10 hour class but never ran a machine but for a hand drill in dads shop (probably with dads hands on his) to buy me pre sofware-loaded off the shelf computers (yo dude, a DELL!!!!), and he has to do all the software loading and such for the entire school district - passworded us all OUT - speaking about job protection. Passworded all of out but me, for he got the word that I tend to get real ugly when someone touches my computers, and I have big noisey machines and a thousand acres of woods behind my shop, and a real crappy attitude some days - like this month. Showed him the CNC mills, and he asked if they were some new type of table saw....... Probably thinks a mechanical engineer is the one who drives the train and blows the horn.
To top it off. I was working in the shop this evening, figuring out the CNC machines I just bought would never run on my 350's - maybe if I load XP, now have to buy that and wait for "Elwood" to load it on (MY rosie red cheeks I will). Enough of this I figure after three hours of watching Windows 2000 lock up, and the tech at the machine place (who has actually been extremely helpful, sympathetic, and wants this to work for me on the lower units since he wrote the specs, and actually ran the machines protos on 350's) has long since gone home - kind like I should have. well, I finall have enough. Go to wash my hands of the day, and from my shirt pocket falls my beautiful never used but to load drivers off the net and files from other computers this very day - day one in its wonderul life, for it has been the ONLY THING to work right....the little thumb drive falls into the hand sink. Thought I got it in time, but the wet spot in my shirt pocket, and the neat little sloshing noise that the drive makes when I give it a little shake tell me otherwise.
heck, at his point, I was afraid to drive the mile home...... Made it without incident.....at least one thing worked right, but #$%@ I left my cell phone by the machines back at work......
Even the students were nutso this week......
Rolling Rock and Sams, take me away.......
[This message has been edited by spope14 (edited 01-07-2005).]
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