WELL... We had a surprise visit from the machine owners today at our humble two man shop... we did a trial sample run and they are very satisfied with the machine and the product output - I can't divulge the real product output because of liability issues, but they have been in business for 100 years and were surprised by the output they have gained thru the Mach3 software... we had the machine running at the limit that is possible with 30 year old hardware hooked up to new generation software...
I am not sure at this point they seemed to be worried about the speed - 7 seconds for the small sample and 50 second for the big sample... they are more worried about the complexity of the software and who they can trust to operate it... again, they are going from a manual input to a computer controlled repeatable output - no comparison in there eyes... they are not worried about the machine, but they seem to be worried if the operator can keep up with the product loading demand !
I am running the recommended speeds and feeds, at this time the trigger speed and flywheel output are almost matched on the product samples. I am running point to point with only minimal "phantom staples" - start to finish (M11 start with X,Y lines then M10 end) dragged extra staples into the sample which were undesirable to the customer.
I may play with the motor tuning if I have time... they are planning to ship it out 2000 km East of me in 2 weeks time, and as a designer/programmer I will not have any further direct contact with the machine past tomorrow. I might only be called on to produce programs from my basement office half a Continent away...
I would like to thank everyone who replied to my humble pleas for help and congratulate Mach on supply low cost competitive multipurpose software.
In the future I hope I can post a results thread on this project, but at this time I am limited contractually not to disclosure any information for legal purposes.
Cheers and a toast to all forum members and hosts !
Thanks, Alex.
PS - Hope to post on another project soon...