Hi All,
Sunday 10 June 2007 07:00I set off from home to Manchester airport
10:40 Loaded on to the flying cattle truck for a 9 hour flight to Chicago. I find it amazing that people complain about the food and the cramped space, no body seems to find it odd that they are been shot through the air at 550mph in an over size coke can with wings.
13:30 Depart Chicago airport in my rental car and head for Galesburg, this is a 200 mile drive on the wrong side of the road.
19:30 Here I am in Galesburg, by some miracle I have managed to stay awake and remember to go the right way down the highway with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car.
I am sure this must be some famous horse, maybe some local will enlighten me with the story, I can't wait
The town is not what you would call busy.
My first port of call was the hotel that Brett (Chaoticone) and myself had booked, this was taken from the list provided by the workshop organisers, I arrived at the hotel and ventured in. First impressions stick, and I did, straight to the carpet, after some negotiating with the manager we came to an agreement, I would not stay there and they would not charge me.
I leave Brett a phone message to let him know we have changed hotel. We are now staying at a much better place, not on the list.
Its very odd to have someone you have never met in person, knock on your hotel room door at 2 am and ask, is it you?
Monday 11 June 2007 06:00We set off to the workshop, the drive is about 15 minutes from the hotel through some very nice country, corn fields as far as the eye could see.
Oh my, did we end up in the land that time forgot?
On arriving at the workshop the welcome party ran to meet me.
The layout of the workshop is spread over two main buildings the red brick structure is where all the classrooms are located.
Practical demonstrations and stalls are in the pre-fab.
The layout of the pre-fab allows for a large seating area this is good for both lectures and as the dining room.
12:00 Lunch
13:00 Today is a slow day, things are getting set up and people are mainly in groups getting to know who is who and what they do.
In one area the electronics practical is well under way, here you learn how to build a full 3 or 4 axis control complete with power supply and all drivers, these can be stepper or servo and can be purchased and taken away with you.
Tuesday 12 June 2007 09:30Bob from Bob Campbell Designs gives a very full and informative talk on his breakout board and the assembly of his complete NC control box.
Bobs multi function board.
The input side of bobs cabinet. Note all the pre fitted mountings, strange, they all seem to match bobs other boards.
The output side. The cabinet is built this way to help eliminate crosstalk.
In a dark corner of the pre-fab the Artsoft team has set up camp.
Here Scott Schafer (poppabear) has his PLC programming demonstration.
Wednesday 13 June 2007 09:00Today is the all day Artsoft demonstration, the classroom was full to overflowing, Art and Brian are both on great form showing all the new and enhanced Mach3 features.
12:00 Lunch
Artsoft round two
Brian in Newfangled mode. We will give him lessons on how to do better shadow animals
16:00 Rick of rick-o-matic demo's his evaporated foam casting system, this is a low cost high accuracy method of producing aluminium castings, the foam used is standard home insulation from Home Depot.
Rick-o-matic CNC milling machine.
Thursday 14 June 2007 09:00Jason (Zealous) is here, Jason is the Adobe Flash guru, talking to a full classroom of information hungry workshop visitors he explained the new front end/user interface of Mach3 and Quantum is flash based, this will allow for much more customisable and dynamic screen sets. The only limit is your imagination.
For more info on the flash screens
http://www.alphagraphicdesigns.com/Arturo Duncan arrives and shows three new boards, the Modbus IO board, monitoring board and the rotary potentiometer card. Art and Brian review the new cards.
10:30 Brian hosts the general Mach3 configuration question and answer session.
13:30 Steve Stallings from PMD-X gives his talk on motors and controller systems
15:30 Scott Schafer (poppabear) takes his second programming PLC,s
Friday 15 June 2007 07:30Art takes the LazyCAM presentation,
Steve Stallings talks on machine accuracy and how to check and maintain it.
Brett Price talks visitors through the configuration of game pads as pendants using keygrabber.
Rick of Rick-o-matic has been producing more of his vanishing insulation castings.
Friday night is the cook out, this went down very well.
After the food the raffle was called by Roland Friestad with his grandson drawing the tickets.
some of the items to be won.
Credit must go to this young lady for keeping us all fed and watered all week.
John of Keling Technology,Inc displaying motors and drive units
Mach control cabinets displayed by Machmotion.com
PMDX had various control cards on show.
I.M Services displayed various items
Items on the swap stalls.
And this is the guy that gave me the most pain all week, Thanks Scott
As for audio you will have to wait for the DVD, Brett has many hours of un-edited video, it should be worth waiting for.
For details of the DVD contact Ynneb or Chaoticone
Graham.
Guest
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