Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] NAMES

Hi Ron;

Good to hear that NAMES went well. Wish I could have been there, this
is the first I missed since going to the show. I hope that ith the
new facility some expansion will take palce o the CNC side of things.

To be honest I like Cabin Fever, it is just slightly different enough
from NAMES to be very appealing. It is also much closer so that helps
too.

One thing that seems to be lacking with the CNC demos are clear examples
of the process and advantages of using CNC at the hobbiest level.
What may help here is a display that shows the CAD/CAM development of an
item side by side with its production in hardware. A indexing plate
comes to mind as something that would be easy to do and quickly realized
in steel. Similarly generating a profile that would be hard to do on a
manual machine may have big benefits in attracting people. The idea
here is for hobbiest to see somethng that they can acknowledge as a real
benefit to things they do. There are obvious other parts that this
may work well with, airplane parts come to mind.

I'm not to sure if this would work in this case but I have to think back
to the days when Linux users had install fests. That is people would
drop in to have their PCs setup with Linux. This of course would be
EMC/BDI specific unless there are publicly available CNC systems for
Windows. Of course vendors of Windows software could step in and sell
and install their product also. I ahve a feeling though that this
might be a stretch for DIY CNC at the moment.

While the first suggestion above could be accomplished with very small
mil/drills sitting on a bench top, it would help to show people that the
CNC software available for PCs is serious stuff. So it would be nice
if a full size tool could be set up and demo'ed running a PC based CNC
system. I'd personally prefer EMC here but what ever can be had would
be nice. The reality is that moving such a machine is not cheap at all
so this is likely to be a tough sell. I think addressing the
perception that these DIY software packages are not the real thing is
important.

I have to cut this short as it is 1 in the morning and I get up at 5 to
go to work ;(

Keep intouch on line.

Thanks
Dave


Ron Ginger wrote:

>We have a chance to make a bigger CNC event at Cabin Fever in January.
>Gary Schonely, the show promoter, has asked me to pull together all the
>CNC activity we can. He has offered whatever table space, power, etc we
>need. Any suggestions on what to do are welcome. Ill be posting more
>when we get closer to the time.
>
>ron ginger
>
>
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