This months MEW are 3 CNC features two too many

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Posted by modeng2000 on 16/05/2011 07:04:54:

It is interesting that I haven’t noticed any comment by the editorial staff.

 

John

 

 

Perhaps because they are still at Harrogate or on their ways back.?

 

Also the mags take preference over other things in respect of deadlines and it’s far more important than to nit pick posts about semantics when we have such exulted contributors on this forum to carry this torch.

 

I also have just come back from the show after meeting many people where were were demonstrating some CNC machines and it raised quite a few points I things not covered in this thread [ just skimmed it]

 

I’ll have to post later as i have a shed laod of work to catch up with.

 

John S.

[Diane CarneyModerator @dianecarney30678]

An interesting thread and thanks to all contributors.

 

I would tend to agree that three articles on CNC in one MEW is a bit much but it is not typical. Sometimes, that’s the way things pan out.

 

As a general commet, my view is that until such time as a sister magazine might come to fruition, there is a place for some CNC in MEW. We can none of us sit, Canute-like, telling CNC to go away. It will be embraced by those who choose to embrace it and ignored by those for whom it holds no attraction whatsoever. The Editor does try to cater for all readers who like to produce things in a workshop, whatever method they use. A lot of readers will surely gain some pleasure from combining state of the art CNC techniques with hand filing an other long held skills. Bear in mind, also, that very few 17 year olds leaving school today would understand why you would want to use ‘old fashioned’ methods when CNC is now available. Possibly not those who have spent time with their parents and grand parents in the home workshop, but those for whom shcool or college has been the only source of education in engineering are bound to think this way. And are we not trying to bring this generation into the model engineering hobby?

 

What I’m saying is that there is, presently, a place for both. Please be assured that three articles in one magazine does not signify a shift – or even a drift – towards MEW becoming a CNC-dominated magazine. As a previous writed has said, of you have an idea for a non CNC article please put pen to paper!

 

Regards

Diane

[Martin WParticipant @martinw]

Hi Diane

 

I think your comments are to the point and sum up the situation comprehensively.

 

I personally am not particularly interested in CNC as I like to produce things by hand and I can’t justify the cost of a CNC machine against the use I would have for such a machine. I take pride making items reasonably accurately that have a good finish and I am still learning how to achieve this. To me this journey is the part of engineering I enjoy and the end product is the bonus; other than making bits and bobs for my machines and small projects for others I don’t have have a major project on the cards yet hence the limited use I would give any additions to my workshop.

 

I like looking at the pictures on the cave wall but I know what causes them and I can walk out into the sun anytime I like.

 

Best regards

 

Martin W

[VersabossParticipant @versaboss]

Aah, a voice from the carpet floor finally !!!

As the relevant issue has not yet landed in the letterbox in this part of the world, I cannot comment much.

However, I am of the firm opinion that pages of printed G-code in a magazine is nonsense.

Even if there are no errors in it (and the re-typing does not generate new ones), it is not too sure if the code would run correctly on every machine. And there are errors for sure, if we remember the problems with drawings

It would be much better – if it is really needed – to put the G-code files somewhere to download. The place could then be used to bring good examples of successful conversions, or how to make Delrin Acme nuts without backlash, or how to work with CamBam, or similar stuff!!!

THAT would interest many, I think.

H

Greetings, Hansrudolf

[Tony JeffreeParticipant @tonyjeffree56510]

Posted by macmarch on 13/05/2011 18:11:53:

Model Engineering Workshop Does this not mean equipment etc to produce Models and small scale? Seems as though we now have to become programmers to produce items we can make in half the time using our skills. CNC is alright if making dozens or hundreds. I make small parts in 20’s and 30’s just as quick or quicker manually than CNC. If the magazine continues in this vein then here’s one that will not be renewing.

 

 

What rubbish. CNC is great for doing dozens or hundreds, that is true; however, it is also great for doing 1-offs where the complexity of the shape makes it a pain in the a$$ to machine it by hand. For example, the one clock I have made so far has skelton plates; cutting the plates, crossing out and machining the wheels, and cutting the hands was all done on my CNC Taig mill. All the parts were 1-offs with the exception of the plates, which were a matching pair. The CNC-milled finish was also a great deal easier to finish to a high standard than it would have been if they had been cut out using hand methods.

 

I think clockmaking was part of model engineering last time I looked, and as observed above, CNC machining has a place in that activity.

 

Regards,

Tony

[Tony JeffreeParticipant @tonyjeffree56510]

Posted by blowlamp on 13/05/2011 23:49:15:

Incoming flak!

I’m sure the first blokes that used a lathe of some sort got slated by their peers for missing out on the pleasure of bringing their work to the round by applying a hand-made abrasive device to its surface, whilst supporting it in the crook of a branch of an English Oak.

And what about the lazy git that first jumped on a horse to get somewhere instead of doing the decent thing of walking?

 

You see, I see CNC as just another tool in the arsenal. You don’t have to use it for everything, but if a part needs an elliptical profile on it and you’ve only got a lathe and vertical milling machine, then how are you going to do it without making yet another ‘never to be used again’ attachment device?

 

Martin –

 

Well put – it is indeed just another tool in the arsenal.

 

I guess it is each to their own – some get their kicks out of the hands-on approach and the feeling of having minutely filed and scraped every last square (or round) inch of the work, others get their kicks from the design process, and want to see that converted into an end result in the shortest possible time. I tend towards the latter (and increasingly, I also get my kicks out of building the machines that will allow me to convert design to finished article ASAP).

 

However, an observation for the old f.., er.. that should read Luddites, amongst us – cortesy of good old ‘elf & safety and the general move to avoid anything that might, perish the thought, cause any damage to the precious & fragile bodies of the yoof of today, the generation currently going through school gets precious little opportunity to do anything “hands-on” these days, and CNC mills, routers, laser cutting tables, and the like are springing up to replace the traditional manual machinery. If MEW doesn’t keep up with that end of the hobby, then it will go from being a useful albeit minority interest mag to being utterly irrelevant. Over the Luddites’ dead bodies, (literally), of course.

 

Regards,

Tony

[john swift 1Participant @johnswift1]

Hi Hansrudolf ,

 

you are correct , a download page for G codes etc. is the only way to go

 

I subscribed to several magazines in PDF format

for many years now , projects using PIC chips for instance

the software and PCB designs have been made available to download

 

no I am not looking for M.E.W. to turn into another electronic magazine

but electronics is an integral part of many machines now

 

Its been a bonus for me that CNC projects , like buses , have come in threes this month

as I intent to build a cnc machine when I can

 

that said ,provided over the year ,the mix of articles is not too one sided , it should not be not a problem to all readers

 

I could argue that because I have a mini lathe

projects for Myford lathes are no use to me , but thats not true

it does not stop me from adapting some of the ideas does it ?

 

but I did notice the magazine is only 64 pages not 68 as normal !

perhaps the page count should be going up to keep every one happy ???

 

John

 

 

 

Edited By john swift 1 on 16/05/2011 17:07:55

[Tony JeffreeParticipant @tonyjeffree56510]

Posted by blowlamp on 14/05/2011 12:37:50:

By the way, can I ask the Luddites how they’re managing to post their replies on this forum with their chalkboards, while I’m having to use a computer to write mine?

 

Chalkboards?!?! Luxury…all we had was a sand box & a stick…

 

Regards,

Tony

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi There

I have no budget to put program code onto the website.

I have a certain amount to pay for magazine artilces only.

regards david

 

[Paul BoscottParticipant @paulboscott25817]

Model Engineer has always showcased the latest technology I see no reason the Model Engineers Workshop should not follow in that tradition.

 

Paul

[Tony JeffreeParticipant @tonyjeffree56510]

Posted by Paul Boscott on 16/05/2011 18:17:19:

Model Engineer has always showcased the latest technology I see no reason the Model Engineers Workshop should not follow in that tradition.

 

Paul

Paul –

 

Couldn’t agree more.

 

Regards,

Tony

[magpieParticipant @magpie]

Blimey what a load of woffel. One bloke who, not so long ago started a thread complaining about going OT., has lots of posts on here with hardly a mention of CNC in MEW but we now know how clever he is !!!!!!!! Do’nt we?

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Posted by David Clark 1 on 16/05/2011 17:14:51:

Hi There

I have no budget to put program code onto the website.

I have a certain amount to pay for magazine artilces only.

regards david

 

 

David.

Why do you need a budget to put downloads on the website – do you mean for royalties?

 

Martin.

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

I’d like to address a few points put forward in this thread.

 

Firstly I agree that three items in a thin edition of the mag is going too far and I am a big supporter of CNC.

Two of these articles are close to finishing so I’m sure the last one could have waited.

 

CNC is here to stay because I work closely with the development of the Sieg machines plus demonstrating these at shows and installing them as well I get to see a greater spectrum than many here. Having been asked the same questions over and over again you get an idea of where it is going.

 

Most people who buy these or make them with support from others have no formal engineering training, in fact most come from office jobs where computers do not faze them.

 

The majority also view these as a tool, for them this tool is to assist them in producing a component for a use, more the reward than the journey. For many it is there to assist another hobby, usually their main one like vintage vehicles etc.

 

Believe it or not many have not heard of MEW or ME or even know the shows exist as they don’t build models. I feel the Americans have a better grasp of the situation with their magazines called Home Shop Machinist and Projects in Metal Ours have the word Model in the title implying that it’s all about models.

 

Fine ME is about models but why does a workshop based at home have to be about models ? Many of my friends have home workshops, none build models and more to the point, none take the magazine.

 

I recently installed the larger KX3 CNC mill into a young ladies quite well equipped workshop near London. She had never heard of ME or MEW and was into prototyping various ideas. With a training in web design she soon picked up the operation and had no formal manual training at all.

 

At the recent Harrogate show two new experiences stood out.

 

The first one was a young lad who came up and asked if he could ask some questions without being laughed at . He had built a router out of MDF, round rod and driven by timing belts. He was having trouble setting Mach3 , the controller software up. I went thru it with him and sorted him out. He thanked me and as he was leaving I called him back and asked his age, he was 14.

These are the people we need to nurture if the hobby is to go on, it may not go on the same way as before but that’s evolution. The first ME’s were also called Amateur Electrician so what has changed? they made their own electric motors for machines because they were not available reasonable off the shelf.

 

The second experience was from a gentleman close to retiring from the heating trade who was interested in getting into CNC but wanted more instruction in it before making the plunge. There are no night school classes and from what I can see only MEW and Digital Machinist in the US at 4 copies per year are close to filling this gap.

 

David can only print what he is given, the fact that these articles were submitted means there are people out there as with all articles you have the choice to read them or not.

Three in one issue is a bit much but ME has been carrying 3 to 5 articles on steam loco’s for years and it’s called Model Engineer not Model Locomotive but I don’t see the flat earth society getting wound up over that. As a previous poster has said you want to see something dear to your interest then submit an article or shut up.

 

At the first Ascot meeting we did a talk on why to choose CNC. this talk which was done twice a day for two days and once on the Sunday was filled to capacity and had people standing outside the screens.

This talk and the one by Chris Vine on painting a loco were the only ones that were full to capacity.

 

John S.

 

[Edit]  

Needless to say there will be some spelling and grammatical mistakes in this text, just so you know before posting to tell me, I don’t give a rat’s arse…………..

Edited By John Stevenson on 16/05/2011 21:23:24

[john swift 1Participant @johnswift1]

Hi John

 

I think your example of the 14 year old and his MDF CNC router

is a good sign that our hobby has a future as long as it evolves( engineering not just CNC)

 

 

perhaps its time to rebrand M.E.W as “Engineers Workshop” and advertise in other periodicals to increase sales ,not that I’d expect it to happen just now

 

John

 

[adyParticipant @ady]

A lot of these kids are on youtube, searching with “cnc router” will give you a look at how many are out there, and an awful lot are homemade units.

There are a lot of them out there because there is a natural progression from pure computer programming, leading to an interest in cnc work and sometimes lathes.

Programming, while amazing, can eventually become unfulfilling in itself and getting it to do “something real and useful” has great appeal to many.

 

That’s the route I took before stumbling into lathework.

 

CNC makes the jump from the computer to the physical world possible and nearly every kid has a pooter nowadays.

[NJHParticipant @njh]

John

All your points are quite valid. There is nothing wrong with an interest or even an obsession with CNC. This thread is about the number of articles about CNC in MEW issue 177. I order my copy from my local newsagent and I accept that not every item will appeal to me. As this is ordered I take it whatever the contents. If I purchased the magazine depending on it’s contents I would not have picked up this issue. Now, hopefully, this level of penetration will be a rare occurance but, if not, then I will cancel the reservation and move to a policy of buying only issues of interest.

If there is such a prepoderence of CNC articles that the bias of the magazine is now slanted that way then, for the future of the publication, it must be hoped that that there are also sufficient interested to purchase and keep it going. It would seem from this thread however that there are many who don’t feature such interest in their workshop activities. I suggest that this is just as valid a position. They do seem however to have received considerable abuse here.

As I previously posted, this forum cannot be considered as representative of the readership as a whole – neither though is the attendance at lectures / demonstrations at exhibitions. I trust a more accurate result may be gleaned from the readers survey – if folk don’t respond then they must accept an outcome based on the opinions of those that do.

Finally you say :- ( if ) “you want to see something dear to your interest then submit an article or shut up.” Not everyone has the experience or perhaps the ability to write articles but surely every purchaser has a right to express their preferences and for these to be considered when building the magazine? If not then the future for the publication truely is bleak.

 

Regards

 

Norman

 

 

[confused.engParticipant @confused-eng]

CNC, love it or hate it, its here to stay even in the ‘model’ engineer’s workshop.

As an automation engineer designing control systems for various pieces of industrial equipment it is nice to see how the other side does things.

Its ‘so yesterday’, everything is stepper control. No AC/DC brushless servo. No Linear motors. No hydraulic servo. No distributed servo networks. Nice simple steppers.

 

I have only just got into the mechanical side of engineering, learning to use the lathe and milling machine to my apprentice trained employee’s horror. MEW has been great at giving me insight into the basics, but to me at the moment a lump of metal is a lump of metal. How about an article or two on properties of metals, what each is used for, merits and failures under certain applications etc.

 

I think an article something like this was proposed in another thread and was shouted down. We all want something different from the magazine.

 

I do like the printouts of the ‘G’ code though, very retro!. Reminds me of my Vic20 days. From my experience though, ‘G’ code is very machine and implementation dependant as some of the codes are customised to perform specific functions on the machine. Printing ‘G’ code in the magazine is bit like the old computer days when the computer magazines used to print multiple versions of the same program for all the different computers out there, BBC ‘A’, BBC ‘B’, BBC Electron, C64, Spectrum, Amstrad, Dragon, Oric, Apple II, TRS80 etc.

 

Maybe not 3 articles per issue. One or two now and then, but don’t bother with the ‘G’ code. And please, we don’t all have Myford lathes. What about articles for other makes and models. Ok, I know I can adapt the designs but it would be nice to know what other people out there are using.

 

Ok, sorry, rant over.

[confused.engParticipant @confused-eng]

I agree with John, maybe MEW should be renamed Engineer’s Workshop as most of the articles in it don’t have much to do with models and from reading other posts on the forums, a lot of the post seem to be about things other than models. More, a how do I do…..

 

Or, how about ‘Weekend Engineer’s Workshop’

Any excuse to avoid SWMBO

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Norman,

I did actually agree with you 3 articles is too much for one issue.

Two of them finish shortly so the last one could have waited.

 

There are also issues in how often articles are repeated, take the CNC conversion of the Myford lathe, it was not too long ago that Tony Jeffree did the same conversion.

In my mind slightly better.

 

This current built is described in the initial description as retaining the gearbox so he can manually cut threads.

retaining the power cross feed for facing and I have to wonder then why bother to add the CNC on in the first place.

 

John S.

[Tony JeffreeParticipant @tonyjeffree56510]

Just to get things into perspective…a few stats from the issue in question.

 

There were 11 items listed in the contents, of which 3 were CNC out of 8 items that were practical/constructional articles as opposed to miscellaneous stuff like Scribe a Line. So 27% of the articles were CNC, or 37% of the practical/constructional articles.

 

There were approximately 25 pages of miscellaneous stuff (front cover, ads, contents page…etc) out of 64 pages of magazine, so 39 pages of readable content. 13 of those (33%) were about CNC.

 

So depending on what measure you take (number of articles or number of pages, etc.) approximately 1/3 of the mag was about CNC.

 

So yes, as John S and the original poster observe, this issue had more than its fair share of CNC; however, as I have already commented, no CNC articles at all in the mag would be far too few.

 

What no-one has mentioned so far in this thread (although I have pointed it out in the thread titeld “An Accurate CNC 4th Axis…?”) is that one of those articles, while nicely written and presented, describes a CNC device whose application to the real world of CNC machining will be very limited indeed, and in reality, of use only to those that enjoy machining parts out of materials no harder than high tensile cotage cheese. That article has been serialised in 2 issues so far, and there seems to be at least one more to come; all I can hope is that no-one has started building to the design as described, because they are highly likely to be wasting their time and money if they do.

 

I have subscribed to MEW for a good number of years now, and have a complete set of issues from the first issue published. This is the first time that I can remember that I have come across an article in the mag that was just plain wrong-headed; there have been plenty of articles over the years, and in pretty much every issue for that matter, that don’t particularly appeal to me, but at least, untill now, I can’t think of another example of something that shouldn’t have been published regardless of personal taste. What disturbs me more is that when I pointed this out to our Editor, his response was that he would have no articles if he rejected everything that he didn’t agree with. That is all very well, but the magazine does its readers a dis-service, and destroys its own reputation, if it encourages its readers to make things that are, at the end of the day, badly thought out and inappropriate for their purpose.

 

Regards,

Tony

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi There

If you read the article, you will find it mentions Tony’s article but states that the article is about the ML7, not about the Super 7.

regards david

 

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi Blowlamp

Contributors will need paying for their articles.

If we put part of the article on the website such as G codes etc there is no budget for it.

regards david

 

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

The survey results will be meaningless in any practical sense, the respondents will be relatively prosperous with time or their hands, or have there own axe to grind.

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi Confused.

Model Engineers’ Workshop has never included articles on models.

Maybe it should?

regards David

 

[Author]

Posts