Noob to CNCZone...

[TheArmoury]

Hello everyone... Based upon a canned suggestion from the website overlord I've decided to introduce myself.

My name is Jeb Burnett, I live in Little Rock, Arkansas and I wear many hats... I'm a commercial real estate broker by detested trade but I'm also the owner of The Armoury. The Armoury is a high-end gunsmithing operation specializing in combat/competitive handguns and rifles, specifically the 1911, Browning High-Power, and Smith and Wesson revolvers. Additionally I'm a Class 3 nut and am in the process of activating by Type 07 manufacturer's license. I'm an active IDPA and 3-gun shooter as well as a rabid hunter and golfer. I'm also married to a trophy wife and have two great sons.

I'm not new to machining having been brought up around machine tools thanks to my mother and uncle... Yeah, that's right, my MOTHER! She had a Bridgeport and a little Southbend lathe in addition to a bunch of woodworking stuff. Her older brother is a friggin' genius and has been a chief engineer for various firearms manufacturers including Colt and Knight Armament. I love my dad more than anything in the world but I can assure you that my labrador retriever has more mechanical acumen than my father... Bless his heart.. But he's a helluva businessman so he can AFFORD to pay other people to fix his crap. :lol I'm pretty much self-taught in everything relating to machining. At one time I was the shop foreman for a high-end performance automotive machineshop as well as having a modicum of experience with CNC VMC's with another company I worked for. Additionally I owned an industrial cryogenic processing facility that specialized in the deep cryogenic processing of machine tools, dies and molds, firearm barrels, and motorsports components. I'm also an FAA certified weldor specializing in aluminum TIG and exotic alloy TIG processes.

But recently I bought out a bunch of equipment from a bankrupt plastic injection molding plant that made all of their own tooling. I pretty much walked out of there buying a great deal of equipment and tooling for close to a penny on the dollar. Among the Hansvedt EDM, surface grinder, another Bridgeport, and a metric ton of tooling I purchased a 1991 Haas VF1 VMC and about $15k worth of tooling... I've used GibbsCam in the past (on Haas VF3, VFOE, and a MiniMill) so I'm in the middle of trying to get it up and running... And having nightmares doing so... It will power up and up until yesterday the vector drive (digital operator, a Magnetek GPD 503) was working, or at least litup and able to run through its screens. But yesterday it wouldn't even come on. Charge light is lit but nothing else works. In the MagneTek manual I have that basically says it's fu*&ed... I had originally thought (and still do) that it had a bad keypad. You could turn it on and it initially had no alarms. But only about a third of the keypad buttons would work. As of yesterday I got a 102 alarm (servos off) and the reset button on the keypad doesn't function but "auto power up" does and will clear the alarm. Coincidentally this occurred at the same time I noticed the vector drive not working...

Anyway, probably not the place to ask these questions in an introduction so I'll go to the appropriate forum. I look forward to getting to know all of you.
-J. Burnett