Well Hood,
your spreadsheets look pretty pro compared to my hand scratched notebook, but I'm pretty good at keeping track of my notes and so far I've never had THAT notebook crash and loose my information.
But enough about that for now, I'm interested in hearing (seeing) more about these silicone enhancements Brett is obsessed with. You know what they say, once you've seen a couple, you pretty much want to see them all!
I did take a quick look at the schematic software before work this morning, I've not used anything like that before. My learning curve allways seems pretty steep with software in general even with instructions that are supposed to be in English cause it never seems to be in the plain, common sense English a hillbilly easily understands. I also saw it's free public/GNU, which is something I really like but seems the author and main force in it's development officially announced he has no time for it anymore and dropped the project about a month ago, so probally not going to get instructions I can read well enough to not understand.
I did take a short go at a Linux software package called "electric" awhile back for electric schematics but it seemed geared toward electronic schematics and not electrical drawings I'm more familiar with. I have an old pc running Unbuntu just for play/education, I like the idea of linux, free, GNU but I didn't find enough clear, organized info for a nongeek like me to get a good grip on it.
There's a ton of info but it's everywhere and I found much of it conflicting. No two "experts" seem to do things the same so a guy like me who don't know squat doesn't know who to believe?
I have many reasons for building my diy cnc but one of the main ones is I want to learn CAD. At this time I know basically nothing so even if/when I have a working machine I have a big hill to climb there before I'll be able to actually MAKE something with it. Before I started this cnc adventure I questioned myself as to if I was taking to big a bite, sometimes I think maybe so, but I sure as hell ain't gonna learn no younger so with help like I've found on this forum I haven't had sense enough to give up yet.
Rick