Messages

211

General Mach Discussion / Re: The discouraging state of DIY CNC

« on: June 25, 2013, 11:29:31 AM »

Interesting side note: In today's news an American CEO is being held captive in a Chinese factory over better wages and severance pay. Guess the workers finally realized they are be exploited...lol.

212

General Mach Discussion / Re: The discouraging state of DIY CNC

« on: June 23, 2013, 10:24:49 AM »

I'm sure everyone on this site has gotten burned with a defective product at one time or another. I've had my share. It's my experience customer service is dismally lacking in all sectors not just in the cnc world these days. I work as a drives and controls engineer and have to hound suppliers to get quotes, return authorization numbers, etc. so its no better in the business world either. Everything goes to someone's voicemail...

213

General Mach Discussion / Re: The discouraging state of DIY CNC

« on: June 22, 2013, 10:49:52 AM »

People want low priced equipment so the the chinese have stepped to fill the need with cheap labor and sweat shops. The trade off is poor quality and little or no documentation.

214

General Mach Discussion / Re: Beginner Problems with Mach3 Installation in WinXp

« on: June 20, 2013, 09:41:20 PM »

One other suggestion is return the pc if it's possible or pick up another cheap XP machine. I've seen used XP's for as little as $100 on Ebay.

215

General Mach Discussion / Re: Beginner Problems with Mach3 Installation in WinXp

« on: June 20, 2013, 09:29:19 PM »

Is this a Dell PC desk top and is XP updated to service pack 3? The reason I'm asking is because about 5 or 6 years ago Dell used a build in small security program in XP for it's laptop units that also inadvertently got carried over to some of the desk top pc's. One of the nasty side effects of the security program on the desk top models is it prevented some programs from loading and running. I know because it happened to my Dell 8400 running XP Pro. Not with Mach 3 but with another program. Apparently it causes the run.exe to hang during the loading process because of a system registry error. The bad news is its not a software fixable problem... its a BIOS bug problem. At the time Dell would replace the motherboard however that option is long gone now. The problem effects random software but not all software for some unknown reason. I spend several weeks digging into this issue. Due to the age of the old Dell I gave up and moved everything to a new Windows 7 platform. I'm using the Dell 8400 for Mach 3 only now. 

216

General Mach Discussion / Re: do they not simply make a wireless break out board?

« on: June 14, 2013, 09:28:24 AM »

Maybe should change his name to I-dont-no...lol

217

General Mach Discussion / Re: do they not simply make a wireless break out board?

« on: June 14, 2013, 08:48:22 AM »

I don't think its a bad idea either. I work as a electrical engineer with large VFD's and process controls. It's becoming more and more common to see wireless field devices such as pressure, flow and temperature transmitters. Siemens, Fisher-Porter have a complete line of wireless devices. The software has build in safety (fail safe) in the event of signal loss. Almost all overhead cranes used in factories have wireless control pendents now... So why not CNC?

218

General Mach Discussion / Re: MACHINE DOWN, FAILS TEST, AT WITS END...

« on: June 12, 2013, 12:22:32 PM »

One thing you mentioned in your first post was the problem happened after the MS automatic update. My Dell 8400 XP Pro, service pack 3, 3 gig ram started slowing down to a crawl one day for no reason. After much investigating I found the  automatic update was eating up CPU time. This was something new as I've been using the PC for along time without issue. I read someplace that Microsoft had a bug in one of the automatic updates that caused this problem. The fix was pretty simple... disable the update function. This may or may not be an issue with you but it worth getting the info out there.

219

General Mach Discussion / Re: Hall of shame

« on: April 23, 2013, 02:16:54 PM »

I don't know what company you are taking about and wouldn't have any way of telling if it a legal or illegal copy. I purchased my Mach 3 from Artsoft and just purchased Aspire 4.0 from Vectric...

The point I was trying to make is before people go witch hunting and start accusing vendors of selling pirate copies.... just have proof it's really a pirate copy.

This brings up a good question... how can someone tell the difference between a authorized and pirate?

220

General Mach Discussion / Re: The ultimate pendant?

« on: April 23, 2013, 12:28:06 PM »

Let's see... if the cat parks his rear end on the divice... I see a $20 endmill crashing into the vise.