I don't, really, but some days I find myself frustrated by "labor saving" devices. Yesterday, our first warm day in a while, was a good day to mill a bowl out of a big chunk of white oak, or so I thought. I had designed the bowl, created a toolpath, and started the CNC running, when about 90% of the way through the roughing stage the z-axis went nuts and milled straight through the bottom of the bowl. Nice. Now I have more firewood and a puzzle to solve - why did the machine break?
Why? Because I used it. That is my corollary -- machines only break if you use them. Of course, if you depend upon machines for income, one can become stressed about that. So I try to focus on repair, and let the chips fall where they may, so to speak.
My debugging skills always get a workout in this kind of situation, and here's what I have done - swapped cables to isolate the suspect controller channel, swapped out the known bad controller board with another of unknown condition, discovered that the second board has a bad y-axis, swapped in yet another spare board, which, surprise surprise, has no working axes.
At this point I contacted the manufacturer -- guy says "Your machine is an antique, our repair guy refuses to work on those old cards, here, buy a new one for $1,600." Well, there you go. I might consider it, depending on how many changes I have to make to my upstream design software. Oy!
So, since I can't run the machine I might as well read a book on my Kindle. But before I download a new book I figure I should tidy up the memory - there are books on there I have read and won't read again, so I can delete those, right? Wrongo, bunkie - them sumbitches is on there permanently, as near as I can tell.
I mash the button that says delete, they are still there. I touch the book icon itself it says "Downloading". NOOOO - stop it - I want it gone, not reloaded!
So I go to the Amazon site, search for "Deleting books from Kindle" -- you'll never guess what they suggest. They want you to buy a book that tells you how to delete a book. Holy schnike! You cannot be serious!
So now I am working with a sales guy over at the CNC company to see what I can work out - like the Scottish regiment -- repair or replace, for those of you who know that joke. "Aye, we've decided to replace!", which is the opposite of the punchline -- turns out I don't have to buy new software, so there you have it.
Now if only I could delete a freakin' book from my Kindle - grrr...
6 comments:
Okay, this is all completely beyond me. On the other hand I would appreciate it if the person who wrote this post TOLD US THE SCOTTISH REGIMENT JOKE instead of being a tease!
LOL - that joke is so old I figured everyone knew it! That, and since it relies on dialect it is a joke best told in person -- stop by, we can tawk...
Fancy schmansy whittling.
Sad song by the lovely Loveless lady. - I'd like to retrieve some photos from my old computer that won't start up. I know that there's things I can try but unfortunately a hammer and chisel are never mentioned in the online repair tips.
She sings it so darned well - you can tell she is singing straight from her heart.
My father's family migrated from coastal Virginia to southwest Virginia to Eastern Kentucky, and by the time my great-grandfather came along our family was a bit further south than Harlan, closer to Tennessee. Also he was a surveyor, not a miner.
How old is your machine? I hadn't realized you programmed dimensions to create bowls. Makes me think of these new-fangled sewing machines.
Post a Comment