An Encounter of the Positive Kind

[John Gamble]

My NM-200 died for no apparent reason. The DRO' s incremented but the table and spindle were DOA. Tech Support suspected the breakout board as the status light was out. Replacing the board with a new one failed to cure the problem.

After talking to the owner, John, he offered to come to my place (about 40 minutes away) and diagnose the issue. After 2 hours he had checked every connection , scoped the inputs & outputs and eliminated all but the main computer. This he removed and took back to the office. The following day, they discovered that the Mach3 software had somehow become corrupted. Tech support uninstalled & re-installed a fresh copy of Mach3.

John called with the good news and returned the computer today (Saturday). After re-installing the computer and verifying that all was well, I indicated that I thought the accuracy of the axis was a tad off. He offered to check the calibration and tweaked the steps per to achieve an accuracy of approximately .0001” over ½”.

Realizing that the problem was not hardware related and therefore not Novakon’s problem, I attempted to pay for John’s expenses. He refused to accept any payment but with a little arm twisting did accept a dinner invitation. During dinner we discussed Novakon’s present and future plans. It became apparent that his commitment to the product was absolute. They are trying to clear up the spindle problems and are encouraged about the new CNC lathe. He was clearly excited that other new products are in the pipeline. I couldn’t help but inquire as to the status of the quick change tooling. He confirmed that a whack of tooling was included in the current shipment expected in approximately 6 weeks.

I thought it only fair to share my positive experience given all the negative press lately.

John

[Dynoray]

That was very good of John to come and fix your machine, most of us would have been happy with a returned phone call or returned E mail sometime in the last few months. If they had of just called and said " Even though your Novakoned is under warranty, we're not going to do anything or help you in anyway to fix it" Then we could have done what we did a couple weeks ago months ago, purchased parts that work to fix it, instead of waiting months in the hope of some type of customer service, which never came.
By the way, the adjustment on the stepper was just fixing something they had screwed up in the first place. My NM-200 Pro came the same way, setup WRONG. When mach is loaded, the steps per have to be setup based on the ball screw pitch and the driver resolution. Mine was set wrong, even though it "supposedly" had a 72 hour test before it shipped.