CNC Retrofit - Kit verses turn on and go

[CNCadmin]

Ouch, metlmunchr, you're making to much sense for this late in the day.

[CNCadmin]

Originally posted by arvidb MetDetect, This way the reader can make an informed decision if to buy from them or not. Arvid

I wouldn’t put it that way; one persons experience in most cases will not deter the masses. But having the company read this thread may help them to react and correct the problem for the future.

[MetDetect]

Paul's on the right track, a blistering flame of the company would accomplish nothing plus this would be against the forum rules and the thread would just be deleted.

Lets see if the mill performs as advertised, if so I'll put the install behind me and move on a happy camper. Most of all I hope others who read this walk away better prepared to shop for kits and mills.

I know the company monitors these forums and I'd like to say that I hope they would consider the feedback so the next customer will have an improved experience but...I requested a refund for the missing bearings I had to purchase and received no reply and the bearings they said they shipped have still not arrived. I guess I'm getting the silent treatment.

[sendkeys]

well maybe a review done on the kit would be the best idea

show people the good and bad. let others reply. ect i know the more userreviews we have the better.

[Falcon]

hello MetDetect.
I was wondering what was the hold up. The kit looked good sitting on the table, when you posted a pic of it. But it did look complicated.

Anyone who wants to know who the kit was bought from, can do a little detective work. Look at the mini mill page. Hope this is not going to get me in trouble.
I think the supplier should do there best to save there name.
I for one was looking at the same kit. But will wait to see how well Mets mill turns out.

Met can you post some more pics, and let us know how the mill works?
I hope it all works out well I know you spent a lot of money.

Good luck.

[MetDetect]

A full review will be forthcoming but here's a quick update:

First the mill is running pretty sweet right now and my concerns about how well it would perform are resolved. Bottom line, this thing is pretty cool.

I still have an issue with Z and we are going to try a 210 gecko on that axis due to a known issue with some motherboard/gecko/servo combinations.

I will soften my previous assessment of the kit quite a bit and give it to you straight. These mills vary from mill to mill and in my case we ran into fitting issues industrial hobbies had not seen before. So is it fair to expect a company to design for issues that are not known? Yes but only to a degree, its just poor luck that my mill fell outside even those allowed for variances. For example the top of my column was seriously not square to the table. IH uses angular bearings to allow for this but mine was so far off Z still got a bind in it when bolted down. We had to put a substancial wedge on one side to level it up, like .100, thats huge and the issue is the mill not the kit.

On part quality, IH offered to replace the two parts which were manufactured out of spec. On other parts not being square and to my satisfaction in finish, I have changed my mind. Not due to anything IH said but it just came to me this morning. These particular parts will not perform any better if they are perfectly square and have a nice finish cut so its not a performance issue. So really the question is how much do I want to pay for the kit? The kit is currently priced given amount of time thats required to manufacture it. At present some parts are parted off with the bandsaw and not always square. Some surfaces don't have a nice finish cut on them because they don't really require it. So the question is, how much more would I be willing to pay to have shiny square parts? The answer is, nada, I'd rather put that money into a coolant kit or some tooling right. So I guess I looked at this from a new perspective and changed my mind.

I finished testing and trying to troubleshoot the mill Sunday morning about 5am and sent a list of the issues to Industrial Hobbies via email. He called about 10:30am and we attempted to resolve the issues over the phone with minimal success. I think we were both tired of taking crap off this mill at this point so later that afternoon he packed up his rig and drove 4.5 hours from Maine to my house in NY to do battle with this mill in person.

Details on this battle later but let me say this for now, based on what I saw when he was troubleshooting the mill, if you are like me e.g. I'm a pretty smart guy but know little about mills, the related software, and electronics then you will be wise to make sure the manufacturer has someone like Aaron at industrial hobbies who's been doing this stuff for a long time and knows this stuff inside and out, and who also has relationships with the related vendors like Gecko and Mach2 products.

Case in point, I fired up the mill, Y seemed to move pretty good but X sounded like it was about to bust a part off, being a newbie I thought the ball nut was spitting chunks of metal it sounds that bad, the preload is too tight, its jamming on the wiper, etc. Turns out that was not the case at all, all that racket was actually coming from the servo motor and the motor wasn't bad, it was the electronic signal the motor was receiving that was the cause, the motor was just reacting to a poor signal by starting/stopping and otherwise complaining.

I would not have thought a motor could make that kind of sound, I mean it spun then stoped dead like it jammed up, then spit, sputtered, forward a little more, then spun again until it jammped up again like it was driving down a gravel road. It had me thinking drive components not electrical signal.

Honestly I would have torn down X and loosened the preload and otherwise cussed the screw assembly trying to resolve this issue and would have accomplished nothing. We swapped out the gecko and presto it improved a lot, we eliminted a ground loop and all the remaining cross talk and odd behavior vanished, man the table was moving sweet then.

See my point, for people like me who dont' know much about this cnc stuff make sure the manufacturer does.

Thats all for now, a more indepth review with pics later.

[CNCadmin]

Originally posted by MetDetect He called about 10:30am and we attempted to resolve the issues over the phone with minimal success. I think we were both tired of taking crap off this mill at this point so later that afternoon he packed up his rig and drove 4.5 hours from Maine to my house in NY to do battle with this mill in person.

Man that is want I call service! That is going ABOVE and Beond to make it right.

[IJ.]

MetDetect: Good news!

Having just gone through all of this myself doing a retrofit I can honestly say I wouldn't get into making kits for all of the reasons you list!

The "variation" between machines can be quite large and designing parts to work in all cases would be difficult.

I read with interest the thread on the Barracuda and a few other threads on things that members think are way overpriced and feel they could make cheaper/better, this is all well and good until you run into a machine like yours that is "off a little".

Typically if you are offering a budget priced kit you have done the best to keep it as close to cost as you can with a small margin for profit as no one works free, If as in your case the manufacturer has to do a house call to rectify an issue there goes that "profit".

I have to commend Aaron and IH for giving this type of service!! .

To anyone that thinks they can "manufacture" cheaper than what's offered by all means go for it you have a ready market but don't make the mistake of underpricing your time as one small "issue" can end up costing you money.

[IndHobby]

Gas: $76.81
Tolls: $12:90
Munchies and smokes for a 562 mile road trip: $14.32
Making a customer happy at 3:15am: Priceless

He really is happy in the photo, well at least as happy as anyone can be in the wee hours.

The technical side of the story is simple.
Weird stuff happens.

As pointed out, the mechanicals were fine; the column was a fair bit off on the top, but nothing that a shim couldn’t fix.

On the tougher troubleshooting side, was the electronics/computer.

Two Gecko’s are going back to Gecko for post-mortems.

The ground loop problem was seriously freaky.

The computer/parallel port is still an iffy situation, and a different parallel port expansion card is going to be tried, and I will post the results of that.

It seems as the Mach2 / Gecko 201 issue is popping up like a virus and needs to be looked at more in general. (To solve this problem I already have a Gecko 210 being sent to replace the 201).

Enhancements to our products/services:

Very shortly we will be introducing the HotWire kit, which will completely wire the mill.
(Wiring was not the problem here and MetDetect did a very good job, but this way everyone will be on the same page).

We will also mulling over the idea of offering a Crash Kit which will be everything necessary to trouble shoot the electronics.

It will include (more or less):
Hand held oscilloscope (like mine)
Digital multi meter or 2 with clip leads and everything
Complete set of Geckos for your machine
A bunch of discrete components, (resistors, diodes, stuff like that)
All the little things that I just reach into my electronic tackle box to get

This way, we (the customer and myself) both know the schematics, the wiring and what signal/voltage should be where; and we can walk through a problem over the phone.

The price of the Crash Kit will be basically the deposit for the test equipment and everything and will be refunded upon return.

If a customer needs to swap something like a Gecko from the kit, there is no charge as those are covered by warranty from me; and the discrete components and the other little things (unless you just keep everything) are free.

On the lighter side of this problem:

I was an electronic warfare tech in the Army for 6 years, and without a doubt have seen some really weird stuff. From an engineer side, you want to find the root cause, from a practical side, you want to solve the problem and call it quits. That’s why a tech will just say “Stuff Happens”, they understand (or should) that searching for every possible anomaly could take weeks or months and will often lead to an unsolvable conclusion.

That being said, here is my personal “Stuff Happens” opinion:

The walls of MetDetects basement are painted gray. It was fairly warm down there, which is odd for basements. I think there is a mis-guided cellular tower that is turning the entire room into a BIG microwave oven.

Least that’s my two cents.

We are Industrial Hobbies

[MetDetect]

The giant microwave theory is interesting Aaron but I'm betting it was the glob of loboster claw I noticed fused to the gecko 320, wonder how that got there on a kit from Maine!

I recommend the electrical kit route for peole like myself who can wire a 110 outlet but have minimal electrical experience. First you know the cost up front (I lost count how many trips I made to Grainger, Lowes, and Radioshack and I don't have the nerve to add up all the sales slips). Second I had quite a bit of fun assembling the electrical but trying to figure out the electrical was not much fun, especially when you consider how much money could go up in smoke if you screw it up. A kit would eliminate the figuring it out part and let you get on with the fun stuff.

Next pics but we'll start a new thread for that.