Chips

The metal machining area and tools of my workshop have seen some action today. The Taig CNC mill has been busy cutting the 6061-T6 aluminum making 1 inch wrenches I designed for the Taig ER16 spindle and collet nut. I have been selling them under the KautzCraft brand in my store. It seems appropriate that the machine the wrenches are designed to fit are also making the wrenches.

The aluminum was purchased from Online Metals. They have a distributor in Grand Prairie, TX which is southwest of Dallas. Round trip from my studio was exactly one hour 30 minutes. Tolls and gas were probably almost as much as shipping would have been. I had the time and I wanted to see the supplier. I didn’t get past the will-call, but it is a large impressive warehouse and cut to order shop. It’s actual business name here is ThyssenKrupp. I don’t know anything beyond that.

Win 10 was giving me a bit of a struggle running CNC as I forgot to disconnect the LAN connection and WIN 10 decided it needed to do an update in the middle of my wrench making. No choice. It just corrupted MACH3 and locked it up, luckily just after I finished a part. Only choice offered was load update and quit or load update and reboot. No wait until later.

I had to find something else to do for about an hour as Microsoft did its thing. I won’t forget to pull the LAN connection next time. I did just that when I resumed work. Next upgrade will be on MY terms. Grrr… I think there is a way to block internet connection while letting the computer access and share files on the LAN. That’s all I need it to do.

The wrench making is documented several places elsewhere so I won’t go into the details here. Search “wrench”.

It’s getting harder these days to use a PC style computer for control operations. The new operating systems are all now trying to be the controller of personal communications and social calendars and interactions with “friends”. Doing it your own way is no longer an option. My three Win 10 computers are totally unaware they are installed on non-traveling desktop (benchtop) large case machines. They keep asking if they can access my GPS information. (There isn’t any!) I also could care less if it can call me by name. I have “Cortana” shut off on all three machines.

My old standby Linux is looking better every day. All my 3D printing is now running in the Linux environment. It is rock solid. Win 10 had crashed a print session when I opened a second desktop and used iTunes to get a file off my phone. Bye-bye Win 10 for 3D printing.

The shop may eventually transition to Linux as it is beginning to look like a far better choice for machine control. I believe Tormach has gone that route already with their CNC control.

Windows and Apple products don’t like to play nice when they are put in the same box.

One really great benefit of working with tangible tools in your own shop by ones’ self is everything is totally the way I want to do it. There may be some compromise but it is because I want to make that compromise. Shop tools almost never need an update unless they need sharpened or are run by computer. There is something very profound in that statement.