Just wanted to share

[scottp55]

Yesterday for the very first time, My Dad (Who bought the Desktop on my recommendation over a $1000 chinese running Mach 3) Watched the Desktop strut it's stuff doing a variety of fonts in hard maple with a Braille (blank) pocket. He bought it for his project,I've run it, sent him pics,virtual previews, the whole ball of wax. He ran a CNC company (Soleras) for 30 years, but apparently machining 99.999% copper(variables percentaged by gas spectrograph) to a .0001" at 73 F for IBM and others is not the same as watching a little blue machine do fonts in maple(or do your wifes name on a plaque). He lives in Vermont, 20 miles from the Canadian border and is 83, trying to get in one last "good thing" in his life (apparently raising 7 kids that turned out decent(except for moi) wasn't enough) and has not seen the 'bot since it arrived. HE WAS WORSE THAN ME ON CHRISTMAS MORNING AS A KID. "DAD, your too close", "Dad, It's Running","Dad, wait until it stops before you stick the bamboo skewer into the pocket to clean it up.) DISGUSTING, watching a grown man you admire, acting like a kid with a new toy. He had a lunch date with my sister written in stone for weeks and when I wrote a program on the fly for a small oval plaque with my stepmom's name in the pocket(freehand script) in birds-eye, He kept saying "I just want to see when it cuts out the middle of the "O and A". Needless to say he was late for lunch. Apparently owning a Baby Blue is more exciting is more exciting than taking out a multi-million dollar loan for a couple of CNC's in their new addition to your building to pump out product for multi-nationals. I now have three new spots on my leather Laz-Y-Boy couches, because he dripped BLO on them because "I want something on the Maple NOW, so I don't ruin them!" I do ramble on, and wish I were more professional like you guys, but I had to pass it on.

[myxpykalix]

That was fun to read and at 83 i'm sure not much else gets him "excited" except "new toys"
I think as we get older we tend to regress backwards to when we were little kids and that shiny new bicycle was what got us excited.
Then you turn into a teenager and it's girls
Then when you hit middle age...it's women
then you hit senior years and it's ladies
Then you hit "old age" and you are back to "shiny toys"

[scottp55]

Jack, I must be getting "old" then as my best friend(34 and "Easy on the Eyes") was here last weekend with her kids and I spent at least a quarter of my time in the shop with the kid's and the Desktop.

[Bob Eustace]

Scott nice story! Two very heavy CNC metal pros I showed off the Buddy too were totally intrigued with seeing text! Weird - neither had done text on their $250k machines. The odd thing as you know, anyone can do text on their first day but true metal CNC takes ages to learn if ever.

[scottp55]

Hi Bob, One of the guys helping us out has 25 years in at my Dad's old shop and thinks in metal and has been teaching me jigging and bits when he can in between chemo and radiation treatments. He said I was worried too much about feeds and speeds until he saw the difference in the cut quality in wood going with and across the grain. I asked him what the most difficult thing was to teach Newbies and he said "How to lie to your machine" and when I asked him how he got to be the head machinist he said "I can understand my lies". When I made my first mistake(the Z topped out and kept cutting the file) I asked him to tell me his worst mistake to make me feel better and he said "I forgot what I lied to it about and it cleared the table off." What?" Oh, 126 pounds of copper, 4 clamps, 2 test rigs and a cooling coil----Oh and the bit and spindle too." OUCH. he said they were all diving and ducking to hard to hit the switch. But that was 20 yrs ago. I've got great respect for them.

[khaos]

Awesome to hear about all of this. Thanks for sharing.

[gene]

enjoy them while you got them !

[scottp55]

Gene, I very much enjoy them and it's inevitable, but I still can't imagine a world without them. This project with the Desktop has brought us much closer than ever before and is why I'm working harder for free than I ever worked for pay. Should have seen his face while he watched the Desktop put his thoughts into wood, I think his face must have been sore the next day.

[mick40]

Thanks for sharing that, it's a heartfelt story.

Mick