Re: Sorry :)

["Ian W. Wright" <ian-at-iw63.demon.co.uk>]

Hi group,

Reading through the posts between Dan and Arne I can see why other
projects might have faltered. Both have very good ideas which, with a
little help could benefit us all but each has their own agenda for the
'way forward'. I think the EMC cookbook is a very good idea and I am
really surprised that the majority of this is not already in existence
in the form of 'planning notes' etc at NIST. If there is such material
available and it is just a matter of sorting it and inscribing it onto
html pages, then I would be pleased to offer my services in helping to
do this as I feel a little impotent sitting on the sidelines knowing
that, being totally bereft of programming skills, I will not be able to
do much on the technical front.
As to Arne's proposals I am all in favour of bringing together all the
elements which will make it possible to construct a comprehensive
machining centre using linux alone. Having said that, I have played with
Varkon and a couple of the other programs which have been mentioned and,
at the moment, I can't see how they can be made intelligible to a simple
machinist like me. I suppose that, like many arriving from a windows
based environment, I am used to seeing exactly what I am drawing on the
screen and so have some difficulty in working with purely text-based
drawing programs. It took many weeks for me to produce my first drawings
in POV-Ray and I'm afraid that, despite the great advantage of being
able to just go back through a text file and alter the odd entities
without having to redraw large parts of the screen, the visual benefits
of RhinoCad have persuaded me to largely forget about POV-Ray (and even
AutoCad!)
So, how to make things progress? Well, my own opinion FWIW is that a
good starting point (which we don't yet seem to have decided upon) would
be for everyone who has had any experience in the fields so far touched
on, to delare their wares and offer for public scrutiny any notes they
have made or program modifications they have done so far - like put
everything they have in one big dumpster, then others with similar
interests can take from this information, try it, comment on it, change
it, add it to what they have done, and put it back in the dumpster for
the next person to play with (being sure to document and date-tag each
piece). Hopfully this way, the best ideas will all be knitted together
into units which are useful to the greatest number of people. I suppose
you could liken such a venture to a truly global 'think tank'. The
problem I percieve at the moment is that, while everyone has ideas
relative to their own situation, most others on the list can't
understand them or appreciate them as they have no real knowledge of
these situations and it can be difficult to convey a picture in words of
something which can be grasped easily by a 'hands-on' approach.
I well remember in my early years of model engineering (when I were
nobbut a lad!), going to the local model engineering society meetings
and asking for advice on what, in retrospect, were fairly simple
machining problems and, after having heard the problem discussed for
maybe an hour by a couple of dozen elderly and very knowledgeable old
chaps, going home dejected as I hadn't understood half of what they had
said and, in any case, they had contradicted each other and common sense
told me that some of the suggestions they had made could not possibly
work on my limited equipment. Then, in frustration, I would haul my
great lumps of metal to the next meeting and someone would say "Oh yes,
if you drill a 2BA hole here, you can attach a temporary mounting plate
which will let you fix it onto the cross slide....." I think this is the
approach we need - find a way to let other members of the group actually
see what you have so far and then the combined brain power of 371 minds
can solve all the problems and hone the finished product into something
we can be proud of.

Sorry to ramble on - I am just putting on the asbestos underpants....

Ian

"Arne Chr.Jorgensen" wrote:
> 
> Dan Falck wrote:
> 
> > Arne,
> >
> > Perhaps it's time to take a simpler approach to the whole project.  I like
> > the idea of adding the graphical toolpath viewer, but we could probably

-- 

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Ian W. Wright LBHI
Sheffield Branch Chairman of the British Horological Institute. 
Bandmaster and Euphonium player of the Hathersage Brass Band,
Derbyshire, UK.
See our homepage at:- http://www.iw63.freeserve.co.uk/

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