Learning by Doing

Fast, easy and engineered installations crank my tractor.

Click to expand...

If I were in business selling those things, I am sure that I would think the same way.

Do you really think 'helping' MATT116 like you helped Paula is helping?

Click to expand...

Paula said she really did appreciate all the tremendous help, but I could not see where MATT116 got answers to his questions- yet. I know that motion control is not something that most of us do, so the help from this site is kind of sparse in that area.

My impression was that PaulaS wanted a solution that she personally could create and sell to her customer, learning something along the way.

Lancie1 said:

If I were in business selling those things, I am sure that I would think the same way.

Paula said she really did appreciate all the tremendous help,

Click to expand...

She did get a lot of help. It just took too much help and way too long.

but I could not see where MATT116 got answers to his questions- yet.

Click to expand...

Matt hasn't made it clear as to what exactly is wrong with the current setup except that it isn't reliable.

Did you see the video I posted? The hard part will be generating the oval and moving/milling in concentric ovals until the desired oval is obtained. I have a canned program for that. MATT116s axes should tune up easily with auto tuning. Making a screen for the Red Lion to access our controller should be easy too. Doing the 2D drawing on the Red Lion may be more challenging.

I know that motion control is not something that most of us do, so the help from this site is kind of sparse in that area.

Click to expand...

I have canned programs for many common applications. It is often just a matter of tuning and programming then that part should take only a few hours at most.

My impression was that PaulaS wanted a solution that she personally could create and sell to her customer, learning something along the way.

Click to expand...

One can also learn by studying what others have done and then doing it the next time.

Paula was lucky in that the chosen motor happened to work. I still think the lack of calculations for the motor size was a major flaw. We see too many kludged designs. It is really bad when the chosen motor isn't big enough and there is no place to install a bigger one. The same goes for hydraulic cylinders, accumulators and valves.

Wow, nostalgia! A few "faces" in that thread. Over 59k views, second only to an S7 post. I watched it on and off as a machine seemed to get built by remote control; wierd. ElevMike stopped posting circa Aug 2008? Anyone know what he's up to these days?

Lancie1 said:

(Bump Up)

One of the longest and best threads deserves to be brought back.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that !! I really enjoyed reading this.

Thanks

Another satisfied reader here; it was like a novel*.

Personally, I am ignorant in so many things, so learning about the individual aspects (SurfAlloy, quadrature**, etc.) was part of an enjoyable weekend read to me. And the part about integers (binary and BCD) and reals were so clear to me: I live in the bits as few do, so oh dear "had I only been around at the time to help."

Btw, my personal favorite line:

I'm pretty sure it's mode 20 (quadrature), I sent her the Mode setup, and it just dawned on me that it may not have been complete...cripes!! I hope she dosnt backcharge me!!!

Click to expand...

I understand Mr. Nachtwey's concern about the technical aspects, and perhaps this was indeed a motion control issue that had a canned solution.

And in the end, that's what the OP received**, albeit in little, perhaps inefficient, pieces; the rest of us got entertainment or education or both.

It boils down to this: the best thing about the 'net is that it lowers the cost to publish; the worst thing about the 'net is that it lowers the cost to publish.

* Yes I read the entire thing, after searching for the keywords [wiring] and [quiz], of all things.

** I've run into that term before and grokked it functionally, but now I understand how it is implemented.

*** Without the "canned" part.

I would have been furious.

drbitboy said:

I understand Mr. Nachtwey's concern about the technical aspects, and perhaps this was indeed a motion control issue that had a canned solution.

Click to expand...

I would be furious if something so simple took so long.
I could or better yet some of my people could have done that in a day. This thread was not a good thread. Yes, it it learning by doing but is not engineering. It is trial and error. Trial and error is expensive.


I have a different perspective. We sell to companies and more importantly the people in the companies all over the world. There are some customers that can almost perform magic. There are others where I wonder how they breathe.


Every year we hire kids either in college for summer or part time jobs. After they pass our rigorous interview they usually do quite good at whatever project we assign them. We end up hiring about 1/2 have them.
That wouldn't have been the case in this thread.
I can show you what some of our rookies have done by comparison.



I wonder if Paula is still programming PLCs many years after.