Messages

71

General Mach Discussion / Re: Anyone Here Have Experience Milling 6061-T651 Wrought Plate?

« on: January 21, 2010, 02:20:45 PM »

I had a funny conversation about coatings with a PhD metallurgist working for Kennametal one time.  She was working on endmill coatings, and some guy in marketing wanted her to take a bunch of endmills around to shops and ask them which ones they liked better.  So they did a big study about it.  She figured they'd be real scientific and try each cutter on their materials and then tell them which one worked best.  She was surprised to learn that almost all of them just wanted "gold" cutters because they "looked cool."  LOL!

So now marketing tries to make them find coatings in cool colors, and if they don't start out a "cool color" they try to reformulate it to get the color even if it slightly reduces the performance.

You gotta love the power of positive marketing!

Cheers,

BW

72

Flash Screens / Tormach Flash Screen Set

« on: December 05, 2009, 08:24:36 PM »

Saw the new Tormach Flash screen.  Very cool!

They have a nice video of it here:  http://www.tormach.com/videos_machine.html

Cheers,

BW

www.cnccookbook.com

73

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: SWARF "0" MAT Son Of Bladerunner

« on: November 21, 2009, 12:36:41 PM »

Very nice looking machine!

BW

74

Finished Screens / Re: Mach3 Aqua

« on: November 17, 2009, 12:55:35 PM »

For the keyboard, I'd think about what to do with Shift or Alt.  

I know they have some function at present, but you might put them to better use.

If it were me, I'd probably want the following:

Plain arrow keys move at medium continuous.
Shift + arrow would be step jog.
Alt + arrow would be fast continuous.

Just sayin'.

If I were gonna have keys to rotate the speeds, maybe <home> and <end>, with <home> doing continuous and <end> doing incremental?

Another thought is to use the <Ins> key to cycle through the jog modes.

Cheers,

BW

PS I dunno if I care too much about whether the exact increment amounts are in the macro or in Mach 3.  They are likely pretty different from one person to the next, though.

75

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: clean wiring no more

« on: November 17, 2009, 10:34:13 AM »

ack, that's not a good omen.  btw, i'm looking through old photos right now and found one of the ultimate machine shop.  Thought I'd share.  This is from the Jet Propulsion Lab.



I doubt my current wiring would cut it there;)

Yeah, it certainly looks good.  OTOH, these are the guys that sent up the Hubble Space Telescope with a ridiculously obvious error in the optics.  Sometimes substance is more important than form.

Cheers,

BW

76

Finished Screens / Re: Mach3 Aqua

« on: November 17, 2009, 10:32:21 AM »

Gerry, your screens rock.  I use them daily and love it.

But, in the spirit of Oliver Twist, "Please sir, may I have another bowl of gruel?"  LOL

I love the ability to cycle through step jog amounts with the "Inc." button.  I'd love to have an "Inc." button on the Continuous Jog as well.  Seems when I'm doing a setup I tend to alternate between faster and slower continuous, and then finish up with an appropriate step jog to get things precisely on target.  Right now I wind up typing values into the Continuous prompt, but that's tedious.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was an "Inc." that would cycle continuous through a set of values.  Perhaps something like 100%, 50%, 20%, 10%, and 5%, or some such similar?

Just a thought.

Thanks again for you wonderful screen set.  At some point I've also got to figure out a way to put a button onto it that will fire up my G-Wizard machinist's calculator.

Cheers,

BW

77

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Ku band power divider (~10 GHz)

« on: November 16, 2009, 10:47:21 AM »

I think they saved the Enterprise with one of those on an episode of Star Trek...

Very cool work!

Cheers,

BW

78

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Experimenting with my rotary axis

« on: November 16, 2009, 10:46:09 AM »

Wow!  Those legs are cool.  Chippendale, here we come.

My brother is the woodworker.  He's been after me to help him build a CNC router.  If he checks those out the pressure will be intolerable!

Cheers,

BW

79

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Tool setter

« on: November 16, 2009, 10:44:42 AM »

FWIW, Ron Newman offers a book on anodizing in the home shop that is excellent:

http://www.focuser.com/atm/anodize/anodize.html

Cheers,

BW

80

General Mach Discussion / Re: build a real cnc

« on: November 12, 2009, 09:14:46 PM »

On the one hand, anything to get away from a parallel ports limitations.

OTOH, they're using a frickin' Jacobs Chuck!?!!

That's not right...

Cheers,

BW