Tormach and Gecko a friendly debate

[Mariss Freimanis]

Tormach,

Can you tell us what brand step motor drives does this use? Would it by any chance be a Tordrive-2000 aka Prodrive-2000 aka pirated G201 REV3? Just natural curiousity.

Mariss

[Chris D]

Originally Posted by Mariss Freimanis Tormach, Can you tell us what brand step motor drives does this use? Would it by any chance be a Tordrive-2000 aka Prodrive-2000 aka pirated G201 REV3? Just natural curiousity. Mariss

Gee, Mariss, rather than tap dancing around the issue, why don't you ask them what's really on your mind :-)

All kidding aside, if you believe they pirated your design and you are making public claims of it, then perhaps you should seek financial compensation from them via legal channels.

Chris

[OCNC]

Originally Posted by Chris D rather than tap dancing around the issue, why don't you ask them what's really on your mind :-)

If they went to the trouble of generating their own castings then it's unlikely that they're using pirated drives...full disclosure is a great business practice and a confidence builder for attracting potential sales inquiries.

[Mariss Freimanis]

See http://www.geckodrive.com/whyg201.htm and draw your own conclusions.

Mariss

[Mariss Freimanis]

All kidding aside, if you believe they pirated your design and you are making public claims of it, then perhaps you should seek financial compensation from them via legal channels.

Chris[/QUOTE]

Chris,

The sad fact is there is no copyright protection for a printed circuit board layout nor is there protection for a circuit design if it is not patented. It cost us about $5,000 to get that gem of a legal opinion.

I opted for the proprietary route instead of patenting for design protection of the G201, a mistake in retrospect that will not be repeated. The G204V 'Vampire' drive is ready to go technically but it will not be available until patents for it are nailed down.

It may be 'legal' to copy but that doesn't change the fact it is a pirated copy.

No circuit design effort went into the copy, no lab books of ideas, no breadboards to test those ideas, no months spent to trouble-shoot the design to make it work, no discarded board layout tries to fit and connect the parts. No years of repeating the whole process until you get it right.

They simply stripped a G201 of its parts, put the board on a flat-bed scanner and had their pcb layout. Their 'engineering' was to put the same parts back on the copied board. They 'designed' in weeks what took me years; the earliest lab book entry for what became the G201 is dated Feb 17, 1985.

Do they know how or why the circuit works? Probably not. The copy has flaws; it is a 5-year old REV-3 and there are some mistakes that are their very own. We tested their 'design'; it blows up where the G201s continue to work.

It is 'legal' to do copy-machine engineering. It is also legal for me to point it out. Caveat emptor.

Mariss

[Chris D]

Originally Posted by Mariss Freimanis All kidding aside, if you believe they pirated your design and you are making public claims of it, then perhaps you should seek financial compensation from them via legal channels. Chris, The sad fact is there is no copyright protection for a printed circuit board layout nor is there protection for a circuit design if it is not patented. It cost us about $5,000 to get that gem of a legal opinion. I opted for the proprietary route instead of patenting for design protection of the G201, a mistake in retrospect that will not be repeated. The G204V 'Vampire' drive is ready to go technically but it will not be available until patents for it are nailed down. It may be 'legal' to copy but that doesn't change the fact it is a pirated copy. No circuit design effort went into the copy, no lab books of ideas, no breadboards to test those ideas, no months spent to trouble-shoot the design to make it work, no discarded board layout tries to fit and connect the parts. No years of repeating the whole process until you get it right. They simply stripped a G201 of its parts, put the board on a flat-bed scanner and had their pcb layout. Their 'engineering' was to put the same parts back on the copied board. They 'designed' in weeks what took me years; the earliest lab book entry for what became the G201 is dated Feb 17, 1985. Do they know how or why the circuit works? Probably not. The copy has flaws; it is a 5-year old REV-3 and there are some mistakes that are their very own. We tested their 'design'; it blows up where the G201s continue to work. It is 'legal' to do copy-machine engineering. It is also legal for me to point it out. Caveat emptor. Mariss

Well, crap, that really sucks for you then! Having been in the software business for a number of years, I can remember all too well, all of the piracy that makes it (the software business) not worth the effort. Keep up the great design work though, our industry needs creative folks like yourself!

Also, I will be ordering a couple of 320s from you in a couple of days once i get caught up on my "real" work.

Chris

[DieGuy]

yes patent protection would protect you in these instances and would provide legal recourse. I bet with a patented Item you could get a shyster to take it as a percentage if it was a blantant copy. You could also probably get a cease and desist order from a court.

I do find it a bit curious why this design is not servo based though.

[trevorhinze]

The new mill design looks great to me and seems to be a nice design. Mariss is right though the tormach drives are in fact blatant copies of his work and it doesn't take an electrical engineering degree to see that, just compare photos and specs of the two! I also don't know who would be silly enough to buy a prodrive 2000 from tormach for 125.00 ea when you could buy the real thing for 105.00ea. I have nothing against Tormach, in fact I have a set of their quick change tool holders and I love them, but the truth is they didn't come up with an original design for their motion controll products.

[miljnor]

My company builds front end for Mortor cycles. When we come up with a design we patent it every time. Even though we will probably never go to court on these patents they are usefull to have.

Our theory is to go after the guys with the least amount of money first, with lawyer letters of that say you are infriging on patent# xxxxx and if you don't cease and desit from selling these you will be taken to court. MOST smaller operators DO NOT want a legal battle and will drop the "copy" imediately. Even if the big guys tell them they don't have to worry about it.

Our lawyers usually like to let the big players makes some money before trying to close them down, so that the lawsuite becomes more meaningfull

When we first go into business my partner was wrighting all the patents by hand using a patent template. Probably not the best way to file, but when you don't have the 5000.00 (i think this is toward the min amount you need), you find your own ways to muddle through.

Hopefully there is a special Hell for all those Lazy good for nothing copy cats out there.
and what goes around comes around..

I will raise on for Gecko one of the true maker/inovators in the drive market. heres one for you Mariss.

[DieGuy]

Originally Posted by Mariss Freimanis I opted for the proprietary route instead of patenting for design protection of the G201, a mistake in retrospect that will not be repeated. The G204V 'Vampire' drive is ready to go technically but it will not be available until patents for it are nailed down. Mariss

Isn't that what patent pending is all about. The applications are processed in a sequental fashion to so that an inventor does not have to wait for a granted patent.

[CNCadmin]

OK guys please start a new thread in the club house.

[Tormach]

OK guys, enough of the one sided Gecko perspective. Here’s the story, in all the detail:

When we started the development project 3 years ago, the first prototypes were built with Gecko drives. We built 3 machines using Gecko drives and found a very high failure rate. What was even worse was the unannounced design change. Without specification change notification we found that one shipment of drives had about 3x the heat output of the previous. This was not a manufacturing error, rather Mariss was trying to meet specification of medical customer who could not tolerate the very high radiated energy of the drive. Mariss had decreased the switching slew rate, which reduced the radiated energy but also increased heating. This is not speculation; it’s what Mariss told me.

We have a very large amount of money invested in our machine design and in every container of machinery. The Gecko drive reliability was unacceptable, but the willingness to change the drive design on the fly, without specification change notification, was even worse. This kind of action on the part of a supplier can kill a company. Gecko is just one of the suppliers that we have rejected during our R&D process. We had a similar experience with an early VFD manufacturer and with several Chinese companies. We are very careful about the parts we put in our machines.

Another company, a former distributor of Gecko drives, was aware of the issues related to Gecko drive failures. As Mariss points out, there is no copywrite protection on layout and there are no patented aspects to the circuit. That company created a derivative product that copied some sections but also corrected the problems in the drive. It is quite apparent that there are changes because we suffered a 25% failure rate in Gecko drives, yet there has not been a single drive failure in the derivative drives made by the former Gecko distributor. I have placed well over 100 of the derivative drives in service.

It’s also interesting to note that the lack of legal protection on the circuit is also what allowed Mariss to use the basic design after he left Centent. If there were legal recourse against pirating a drive, Centent would have been after Gecko a long time ago. As it is, nobody has broken any laws. In fact, the competitive pressure placed on Gecko by the Protobyte drive is the fundamental motivation for the new and improved Gecko drive. This little saga is capitalism at it’s best and worse.

G. Jackson
Tormach