Just IN- Hello world

[jgramlich]

Howdy folks,

My name is Josh and I am born again hard. Six months ago I shuttered my computer support business and moved back to Peoria after 10 years in Chicago. Last summer a friend of mine had gotten a job with Caterpillar. They were providing free welding training and according to my friend, they had "robots that shoot fire".

Three weeks later I'm driving to a client and for about the 50th time since I had heard the phrase "robots that shoot fire" it pops into my head once again. I took this as a sign and within two weeks I was done with computers and gone from Chicago.

It took me three months of bugging a friend who owned a steel fab shop and convincing them I really didn't care about the money, but she finally hired me on as a CNC machinist running a drill line. I now work for the oldest continuously operating steel fabricator in the United States...operating since 1857. We primarily focus on structural steel but do jobs for other local businesses as well.

When I arrived, you'd believe it just by looking at the machine tools. Just about every major tool in the shop was older than I am, but for the drill line. These last three months have seen the installation of a plasma burn table and a CNC angle shear/punch. My previous experience with computers and networking has put me in the position of being the unoffical head of CNC operations.

I never thought I could make the transition to wandering into work at dawn after being a self employed slug for so many years, but this job is such that I keep telling myself "nobody deserves to get paid for having as much fun at work as I do" and it's the truth. I make nothing (for now) and have to get up way to early for any human being but I just dont care. Fire and steel are where it's at.

I have begun teaching myself production management and am looking forward to discussing CNC operation and production with all of you.

Cheers,

Josh

[jgramlich]

I'd also like to add that I'm running the following robots:

Voortman beam/drill line for drilling structural steel. This is a DOS based machine.
Controlled Automation Promax/Hypertherm HPR260 plasma burn table. (WinXP)
Controlled Automation ABL-74 angle punch/shear. (WinXP)

[Peddinghaus2]

What kind of software are you using with your drill/saw?

[jgramlich]

AutoCAD for dxf for the burn table. The drill uses a Voortman tool to convert Tekla exports to a format readable by the drill computer. The angle line uses WinCAD, a Controlled Automation tool for multing (though we just do all our angle multing by hand for now...just as easy).

I also just ran across a tool called MyNesting (google it). At first glance it seems pretty awesome. Does a decent job of irregular shape nesting and it's cheap. In fact it's free until November.

[Peddinghaus2]

So the voortman changes the file from a Tekla file to a DSTV?

I know that our software can take the Tekla file straight from the model and send it into Peddimat in only one conversion (no DSTV involved) are you taking the file, converting it to DSTV then running it?

I will check out that free nesting software - sounds cool.

[jgramlich]

I think we're getting dstv output from tekla and then the Voortman conversion program converts it to a form usable by the drill. You'll have to excuse my ignorance here...I haven't really paid a whole helluvalot of attention to that part of the process yet. I get *.NC files from the detailer and the conversion program converts them to *.NC1 (or vice-versa, I can't remember just now).

[tekla019]

Originally Posted by jgramlich I think we're getting dstv output from tekla and then the Voortman conversion program converts it to a form usable by the drill. You'll have to excuse my ignorance here...I haven't really paid a whole helluvalot of attention to that part of the process yet. I get *.NC files from the detailer and the conversion program converts them to *.NC1 (or vice-versa, I can't remember just now).

Pretty much all the new generation plasma cutters read the dstv file right from the detailing software and do the "conversion" internally. Here's the one that seem to be leading the pack: structural steel fabrication using dtv files