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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: New people welcome !! Come in here and introduce your self!
« on: October 07, 2008, 06:49:57 PM »
Hi;
my name is Aki. I live near Los Angeles CA but wish I was in New Zealand or Australia. My day job is as an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab developing scientific instruments, mostly electronics, programming (embedded and otherwise), and mechanical design. However at night I can finally play with my homebuilt CNC mill.
About one year ago my son brought home a very old Bridgeport mill. We are trying to make some unique wind turbines for sale (I hold a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering but my area of expertise is aerodynamics) and eventually got tired of manually machining molds etc. So I decided to automate the mill, because I have a lot of experience designing hardware and software for automation. A quick Google search however revealed an entire universe of people who have already done this. I did not have to design and build anything. The MACH program and this forum were mostly responsible for making it very easy to convert our mill, which is the focus of our shop. Everything we need to make pretty much we slap onto the CNC mill. While we also have an old Logan lathe and a host of other stuff the CNC mill is used pretty much for everything. You cannot beat such a tool, in precision and ease of use. I had to learn G-codes but by now find it easier to write the code than to manually machine even for a single part.
Up to now I never posted because every question I had had already been answered by someone somewhere on this forum. Now under the threat of being kicked off, here I am, and I want to thank all the people who do post and contribute replies. Know that what you put out here helps a lot of silent members do a lot of neat stuff.
If you actually read this and know of a job for somebody like me or my son (FAA Certified Airplane Mechanic) in the two aforementioned countries please drop me a line (aaabtahi@gmail.com). Even if you don't I always enjoy communicating with other people who are interested in making things. Seems like there are fewer and fewer of us left, so it is surprising how many members are in this forum.
Aki
my name is Aki. I live near Los Angeles CA but wish I was in New Zealand or Australia. My day job is as an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab developing scientific instruments, mostly electronics, programming (embedded and otherwise), and mechanical design. However at night I can finally play with my homebuilt CNC mill.
About one year ago my son brought home a very old Bridgeport mill. We are trying to make some unique wind turbines for sale (I hold a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering but my area of expertise is aerodynamics) and eventually got tired of manually machining molds etc. So I decided to automate the mill, because I have a lot of experience designing hardware and software for automation. A quick Google search however revealed an entire universe of people who have already done this. I did not have to design and build anything. The MACH program and this forum were mostly responsible for making it very easy to convert our mill, which is the focus of our shop. Everything we need to make pretty much we slap onto the CNC mill. While we also have an old Logan lathe and a host of other stuff the CNC mill is used pretty much for everything. You cannot beat such a tool, in precision and ease of use. I had to learn G-codes but by now find it easier to write the code than to manually machine even for a single part.
Up to now I never posted because every question I had had already been answered by someone somewhere on this forum. Now under the threat of being kicked off, here I am, and I want to thank all the people who do post and contribute replies. Know that what you put out here helps a lot of silent members do a lot of neat stuff.
If you actually read this and know of a job for somebody like me or my son (FAA Certified Airplane Mechanic) in the two aforementioned countries please drop me a line (aaabtahi@gmail.com). Even if you don't I always enjoy communicating with other people who are interested in making things. Seems like there are fewer and fewer of us left, so it is surprising how many members are in this forum.
Aki