I pulled my first parts out of my new CNC machine yesterday. I got the engineering manager in to see it run and answered a bunch of questions about how the thing is set up, what we can do with the machine, the remainder what needs to be done to make it fully functional. He went to my boss to tell him to get the intern to make some demo Pro/e part to machine. Then my boss comes running to me with a task (which I'm already on) and to see the finished parts: "how come I only hear about the bad news first". These are trial parts I didn't intend anyone to see, just testing out the programming software, the machine, the post processing software, the set up and the old fart running it all. But, push came to shove, I got some parts out of the machine that everyone was skeptical would ever run. But, come one, gimme a break... They didn't even decide where to put the machine until 4 months after we got it, the room needed to be rebuilt to accomodate the machine, I didn't even get the programming software installed on my compter until after I got back from my August vacation to Detroit. Then I got some guys in to fix the spndle/probing problem (which is still not totally fixed). And now I'm kinda up and running. More tooling's needed, more fixturing stuff; we go to the department supervisor Monday, Rowell and me, with our list. The bill will be $6-8k; wish us luck. I go to SF next week, so WTFWC.
Love, Dad