Hello TJ. I enjoy and benefit from the training sessions, and see them as a key part of helping Shopbotters become functional. But I only watch the end results on YouTube, so when the live session takes place is not important to me.
But, as to the topics, I think it would be great if you could occasionally visit a customer's machine, and show how to evaluate its condition, and then how to fix it up. As noted by Martin, this could get into grounding issues, USB/Com Errors, and alignment of the machine, especially the spindle, (Using a dial indicator, and doing it without).
As part of the evaluation of the machine, showing poor cutting results and then figuring out what is wrong, and then showing how to fix it perhaps seems obvious. But on a slightly more subtle level, doing something that shows what the best cut is that you can get on various types of machines would be very helpful. When I work on trying to improve my cutting, I don't know if my machine can do any better or not. And if I am not sure, because I am only familiar with my machine and one friend's bot, I really feel like I'm guessing.
As a last variation on that theme, if you showed a perfect machine, and then put in some worn gears, and showed what happened, then put it back to good, and knock the spindle out of alignment, and showed what happens. Show cuts with all the cut parameters perfected, and then show what happens when they have been messed up......
Thanks for asking, and please keep up the good work, Chuck
Chuck Keysor (circa 1956)
PRT Alpha 60" x 144" (circa 2004)
Columbo 5HP spindle
Aspire 9.0, Rhino 5