Post Processor Modification

[brian.owen]

So, Brady, you’ve got questions, you don’t want to be left in the dark. I can answer questions—I’m not clear on your vision of how ShopBot is arranged as an organization—but even the guy who works on the plastic tool gets to participate in development and planning throughout the company.
Ted is still very much the president an owner of ShopBot—he’s in Chicago representing us right now at the Vectric User Group. Neither me nor You nor Ted can snap his fingers and skip over the work that needs to be done to fix these problems. You'd do well to try to have an actual conversation with the people that are doing the work to address the problems you see.

It sounds like you’ve got a question about backward compatibility. As you’re aware—ShopBot control cards use a large D-sub connector to connect to the interface board. This connector is totally out of date and problematic from a reliability standpoint—but has been maintained as a standard so that all future controller cards can be plugged into old ShopBot tools. This may be changing—we would like to move to a better connector from a reliability and price perspective. However, that does not preclude the option to connect to old boards through an adaptor. That is the current opinion on how best to move forward with the board design while not abandoning long time users. The current versions of the FabMo control card use the D-sub and there will be plenty of these designated for upgrades when the time comes as well.

If you have other questions, I'm sure I can give a reasonable answer--If I don't have the answer, I can probably get someone here who does. If you just want someone to berate...there may not be as many takers. I'm here because I want information that I can use to guide decisions an improve our company. It's the same thing I do in the Handibot forum.

[JimmyD]

So my question is....can anyone at ShopBot, in a position for their opinion to be meaningful, state when a reliable replacement for our unreliable controllers be designed, reliability tested, beta user tested and available for purchase at an affordable price? Not we're trying, we're planning, we're blah, blah, blah. Tell me a date.

Brian,

I applaud you for sticking it out and continuing to show a presence on this forum. I hope they're giving you a bonus for doing it when no one else will.

You just wrote to Brady that "I can answer questions...", well I will ask my question again. You didn't answer it before, so I'll try one last time.

Please tell me a date when Shopbot will have a proven reliable solution to the comms issues. I don't care about what you're doing, what you're trying to do, what the issues are, those should be internal discussions and not aired on this forum. Just tell us, the customers, who paid good money and who recommend or not recommend to others, when the date is.

If you had purchased a new car, computer, stereo, camera, drone, etc., and it continually had problems, would you really care about the issues surrounding solving it or just want to know when your stuff is going to be fixed??

What is the date?


P.S. Can anyone point me in the direction of purchasing one of the many existing controllers that function without these issues and will integrate into my machine?

[mezalick]

Brian,

P.S. Can anyone point me in the direction of purchasing one of the many existing controllers that function without these issues and will integrate into my machine?

Contact Gary Campbell..

Michael

[Gary Campbell]

Ron, Gerald, Jimmy, et al....
You don't have to worry, or wait for that matter. I have been providing replacement and upgrade control boxes for ShopBot and other controllers for over 4 years now. In late 2016 I reached an agreement with SB to provide replacement control boxes using the SB RBK I/O board (as currently shipping on standard models) and new SB controller cards. A good number of these were sold, but at the end of 2017 I was forced to remove that product from our offerings due to connection issues and the pain that my customers went thru. Not all, but about a quarter of them. Eventually (to me a week or so is an eternity) they all did connect and are cutting well.

There have been a number of those users here that will bear out the improvement those systems made over the original. 2015 technology compared to 2003 technology, there should be no question. Since the end of 2017 when I stopped providing the "approved" controller I have been building replacements with a number of other controllers.

Currently my favorite for budget replacement systems is the Centroid Acorn. Put out as a replacement controller for most any smaller (non ATC) CNC by one of the premier US control mfgr's and at a very attractive price point, hundreds less than the SB parts. That attractive price allows me to provide a controller, and a PC to run it for less than the "approved" version that ran on SB control. Those systems use an ethernet connection and have capability of 400K Htz comm rate. Current SB users that are running them have commented on the how quiet they are, how much faster they are, how well the machine and user coordinates work together including soft limits that will not allow you to hit the hard stops, decelerating before the stops.

This system allows the alpha drives to be reprogrammed to eliminate the resolution multiplier that cuts unit values by 5. They also allow more than appropriate rapids with resolution over 10K steps per inch. Alpha drives are connected to discreet pins allowing screen messages that if the X trips, it says the X is tripped on the screen. Same for estop and all limit and homing switches.

Of course since they do not include SB components, they will never be approved by SB, nor will they allow them to be advertised on this forum. They are advertised for sale on the Centroid User forum, Sawmill Creek and a number of other places I frequent. These are commercial grade controllers with features far beyond SB's current offerings and cost less. Each unit is assembled, tested with its own dedicated Lenovo Windows10Pro i5 computer and if you send an "SBC" custom settings file I will set the unit up so that all a user has to do is plug in the motor cables, verify direction is correct, verify the step resolution is accurate and most users are up and running in an hour. I do not ship them without a PC. A widescreen monitor (16:9) is required and a touchscreen is recommended. With a touchscreen keyboard and mouse are optional.

[Brady Watson]

So, Brady, you’ve got questions, you don’t want to be left in the dark. I can answer questions—I’m not clear on your vision of how ShopBot is arranged as an organization—but even the guy who works on the plastic tool gets to participate in development and planning throughout the company.

The same question has been asked over and over again by myself & others. No answer that satisfies the question has been given.

Neither me nor You nor Ted can snap his fingers and skip over the work that needs to be done to fix these problems. You'd do well to try to have an actual conversation with the people that are doing the work to address the problems you see.

We have been ready to have the conversation for 6-months now. There appears to be a high interest in answers, given the fact that the number of views of this 6-month old thread has DOUBLED in only the past week. Please tell your workmates to talk to us. No need to skip over work - instead, tell the customer base what the plan is going forward. IS there a plan? When can customers expect a controller that just works? It's like they are begging you to take their money to fix what should have been good to begin with.

Try to understand, it's one thing to have a $3k HandiBot that won't connect and something entirely different for a $40k machine that needs to be cranking out product that doesn't connect - Do you get that? Really think about that - pretend you're the guy who's on the hook to produce and he can't. THAT'S they kind of situation that is going on. That's the frustration you hear in people's posts.

Is SB getting out of the production tool business by focusing on HandiBot because nobody relies on them to make a living? If it's just a toy/hobby thing, then it doesn't matter as much right? They can just go inside and watch TV or maybe shelf it and never mess with it again. You said yourself that many are never even used. Maybe you ARE onto something after all...

It sounds like you’ve got a question about backward compatibility. As you’re aware—ShopBot control cards use a large D-sub connector to connect to the interface board. This connector is totally out of date and problematic from a reliability standpoint—but has been maintained as a standard so that all future controller cards can be plugged into old ShopBot tools. This may be changing—we would like to move to a better connector from a reliability and price perspective. However, that does not preclude the option to connect to old boards through an adapter. That is the current opinion on how best to move forward with the board design while not abandoning long time users. The current versions of the FabMo control card use the D-sub and there will be plenty of these designated for upgrades when the time comes as well.

I think you misinterpreted what you were told. A D-sub connector is just a connector. The SB controller card - now that's way outdated - not because of the connector but the components on the board and USB. There are plenty of controllers (incl. CNC, automotive, PLC etc) on the market using DB25s, DB37s et al without issue. It is simply a means to interface hardware in a convenient way - nothing more. In this case, it carries step & direction + GPIO, just like any other controller out there. If so inclined, one could plug just about any controller on the market into a ShopBot I/O board using a simple in-line breakout to match the pin config and run a tool on non-USB COM protocol. It's easy. It's cheap. It's already being done by some of us.

The question of compatibility should be answered for the benefit of your customers reading this thread, as well as those who ask me directly. Right now, I don't know what to tell them. In several cases they didn't get a solution by calling SB support, and they are frustrated. What would you suggest that I tell your customers regarding COM problems on legacy 4G+/Alpha machines? What should they do? What would YOU do?

If you have other questions, I'm sure I can give a reasonable answer--If I don't have the answer, I can probably get someone here who does.

Again...many have asked the same question, but have received no satisfactory answer.

If you just want someone to berate...

Brian - no one is berating anyone. Nobody wants that. They just want answers. 6 months ago it was going to be 'later this year'....well, it's later, now. What has been done? When is a new reliable controller going to be available? A smidgen of accountability isn't too much to ask, is it?

You need to realize that SB has all kinds of blogs, news areas etc, but there has been NOTHING on most of them for YEARS - Dude....YEARS!!! So most have already 'done the waiting' in good faith, but now they want answers. I think they have a right to know, especially if a ShopBot is an integral part of the way they make a living. Wouldn't you agree?

Throughout the years, ShopBot always prized itself on being open and transparent - and yet, there seems to be an extreme reluctance to answer a simple, reoccurring question posed by customers with a vested interest in the answer. Why no answer has been given yet just seems fishy & my hunch is that no answer will be given to the satisfaction of those who want to know.

[brian.owen]

Date for comm issue fix--I will need to have a conversation with Sturmer if I'm going to try to provide a date, I know what he is working on and which obstacles he has to overcome, but I can't put a date on the conclusion of that work. I will find out.
more detail...the plan for fixing comm issues is a controller that 1. does not rely on USB connection, and 2. does not stream moves to the machine from some other device. The controller we have been working on is Linux based, it was not going to be able to run SB3 in its current form--so we have a few choices, revise SB3 to run on linux, adopt 3rd part software, start from scratch building something of our own. SB3 is far from perfect and I don't think anyone felt that it would be a good use of time just to port over a piece of software that is already past its prime. So we opted to develop a new interface from scratch. I know this is the same story you've heard over and over--I just wanted to repeat it for anyone that hasn't followed along for the last 4-5 years. All this is to say--the fix for comm issues is tied up in the development of a new interface. We chose the path that we thought would be best for customers but it has taken too long to get the software up and running. However, that is the current state of things and the people working on the problem are still dedicated and interested in making it work. It is the number one goal for the development team until it is available on all tools. It is not something we can all directly impact, but I think putting it through as many use cases as possible will help it be better--I use FabMo on all of my production tools that cut plastic and metal parts for HB and SB--I need those tools to run all day without interruption, so any problem that prevents me from doing that is reported to the development team.

Since Handibot keeps coming up as an example of ShopBot not caring about customer needs--I think this bears repeating: When a Handibot customer loses a weekend of work due to issues with software (or hardware) I am furious. I have written more support documentation for Handibot than we have for any other recent product. I will drop what I'm doing and drive across states to fix things in person that can't be fixed over the phone. I fume at the thought of someone who has retired and has limited income, purchasing a $3k Handibot expecting to fill his or her time with an enjoyable hobby--only to be confused and frustrated. I think that is just as bad as someone who relies on a tool for business spending $40k and having a bad experience. So please, don't conflate the Handibot's cheerful blue and gold exterior with a lack of seriousness about quality and support--also realize that it is a tiny part of what ShopBot is focused on day to day.

So I'll dig around for more information on dates for Big Tool releases of FabMo on Monday and report back here. Obviously by setting a date, we'll be setting ourselves up for another repeat of this whole thread in 6 months or whatever--but I figure it is better to say what we know and communicate what we're facing if we don't meet a deadline.

[JuniorLee]

Brian I am in the process of building a CNC router and planning to use a Shopbot controller in order to continue to use eCabinets software that I have 11 years experience with. Can you tell me if this new controller will be able to use the the Shopbot link from Thermwood? Thanks
Jr Lee

[brian.owen]

I have not personally used eCabinets--but from everything I am reading about the ShopBot Link right now--it looks like it outputs directly to the ShopBot control software--similar to the options in VCarve to send directly to tool. The new control system will run both GCode and SBP code--but do not currently have the ability to link directly to CAM software.

Once I can talk to some of the cabinet makers at the office tomorrow I'll give a more thorough answer.

[ron_moorehead]

I would like to thank Brian for sharing with us. I like and I hope most of the forum followers appreciate the communication from someone at ShopBot.

In my past life I was the project manager on a lot of projects, the best thing I ever learned was communication, even over communication. What I have seen with ShopBot and I think Brady already brought it up was the lack of communication from ShopBot. We the people on the forum seem to be able to share and help each other, but unless you call ShopBot yourself we can’t seem to get any information. I my case I had an older PRT Alpha that the rails were wearing out, I found on the forum a post talking about harden replacement rails I could purchase from ShopBot, nowhere on the ShopBot web site could I find any information about them. Makes me wonder what other cool toys I maybe missing for my machine.

Communication, if you set a date and the date slips because of problems I don’t care if you told me that it is going to be later at least I know that now. But to be in the dark and not know anything going on that’s bad communication and you lose the trust of people.

Reliability, I have two laser/engravers and a 3D printer, on the laser/engravers I can run jobs that are one to two hour long and know when I start they will work and be finished with out any problems. My 3D printer runs 5 to 8 hours prints all the time and I also know that it will work and finished without any problems. My PRS Alpha ShopBot any job I run 10 minutes to 8 hours I always think when I press the button to start will this be the time that it crashes again.

Again Brian, thank you for the information and communication.

[brian.owen]

So Jr Lee--Just confirmed that the ShopBot Link is definitely a Windows/SB3 thing.

Ron--I'm doing my rounds this week to get more full information about the development schedule on FabMo. The release on Desktop tools has been "imminent" for a while now. The most recent software release was a big step forward from where it was (GUI-wise)--and we have been trying to get Tech Support familiar enough with the new interface that they'll be able to help new customers. The release on larger tools will be farther off--we're working in order of complexity. I'll update here.