Solid Box for Mastercam

[Trapper Paul]

Does anyone use the Solid Box for Mastercam?

[gcode]

We've got 4 of them, from 3 years old to almost new and haven't had any trouble

with any of them.

[TK-32™]

I do. Two exact systems. One for work and one for home. They installed mastercam. Not that mastercam is difficult to install but they made sure it all worked.

[gcode]

This is where Jeff will step in and call us idiots for not rolling our own

 

Though I did just get a new machine and had our IT dept build it to my specs... and I'm having trouble with it.

That's what's good about SolidBox.. plug them in and they work ..

[TK-32™]

ROUR I was thinking the same about Jeff. hahhah

[Trapper Paul]

NICE! ..... I just ordered one on friday, I can't wait till it gets here

[Rotary Ninja]

It's like cars. You can go buy a $60,000 Corvette if you just want a fast car made of plastic. Or you can go buy a $4,000 Mustang and dump $15,000 into it and show that Corvette it's @$$ in the corners and the straights

 

It's the same with PC's.

[TK-32™]

....

[gcode]

It's like cars. You can go buy a $60,000 Corvette if you just want a fast car made of plastic. Or you can go buy a $4,000 Mustang and dump $15,000 into it and show that Corvette it's @$$ in the corners and the straights

 

It's the same with PC's.

 

True ... but like cars .. do you want to drive to work.. or drag your toolbox out of the trunk half way there.

I'll get the bugs ironed out of my new IT dept build machine but I'm going to lose a half day of working

next week when they come in and fix what should have been done right in the first place.

I may have saved some money buying the machine, but I'll give it back next week.. plus I'll be making awkward explanations to the GM

as to why I'm not working..... and why the guys who need my files aren't working.

[Rotary Ninja]

Yeah, I see your point Tom. But it all depends on how well you put it together and whose parts you use. I am sitting here on my custom built PC and all I ever do to it is disc cleanup, routine registry cleanup, and blow the cats out of it every few months. Funny, because we don't have cats. But I always find 'em in my fans

 

I have built all my own PC's. I did buy a Gateway a LONG time ago when they were the PC to have. But that was it. And I had more problems with that than most of my home-built PC's. I have had a couple problems with bad hardware in my builds, but we also had two Dell's purchased recently at work with problems. On one the front USB ports didn't work. The other had a hard drive failure. So it happens to the best of PC's, home built or store bought.

 

I am not at all against a retail PC. I would love to have an Alienware. But for the price of one I would just build my own and have something a little better.

 

Oh, and for the record, my 90 Mustang would blow away an LS1 Vette and I never had my toolbox with me (slows you down)

[Rotary Ninja]

Oh, and sorry this got off on a tangent. I am just a PC nerd and love building them. For what it is worth I would absolutely love having a SolidBox at work. If it was my money it would be different. But the specs on those things are crazy cool.

[Jayson Kramer]

I have both here at home office hand built and bought. I had stopped for a little while building my workstation and got some dells for me and the wife then with all the I7 that came out decided to build again. so the new computers this last year for me and my wife and my youngest I built. I just bought my oldest a Dell XPS as I did not have the time to build. but I also have Gateway workstations and dell Workstations still. Laptops for me are Dell Precisions as they are perfect for my design and programming needs.

Some times cost does factor in as I work for my self.

 

But I do have fun building them for sure.

[gcode]

I like working on computers too. My home rig is a Dell refurb that's I've upgraded with more memory

and solid state hard drives.

At work I normally buy Dell or Dells from SolidBox.

This time I thought I'd save my boss some money as our IT dept beat Dells price by a grand.

Sadly they buy the machine from a PC builder who threw the assorted parts in the case and shipped it.

The video card wasn't even properly seated in the PCiE slot!!!

I don't think the machine was ever powered up before they shipped it.

Now I'm having trouble with it and I'll give the grand back and more next week when IT comes in to sort it out.

Lesson learned..

[Rotary Ninja]

I thought your IT guys built your problematic PC. That's a whole different can of worms there. I would be blaming the IT dept for that one.

[gcode]

no they ordered it from a pc builder, but I do hold them responsible.

All the compnents are quality components.. the machine just wasn't set up the way I ordered it

[Rotary Ninja]

Next time let me know. I'll build ya a bad@$$ PC. Just send me a check

 

I'll at least run it and put it through it's paces before sending it off to Cali.

[Jayson Kramer]

That funny RN I used to do this for the customers out here when I was Gcodes Dealer ( not Drug Dealer. Mastercam Dealer). most company's do not want to pay and is just easier to send them to Dell or Solid Box now.

[Rotary Ninja]

Yeah, I know what you mean. I think the only way I will ever be able to program on anything other than a Dell at work is if I take my PC in and slap the Hasp in it. Actually, I think that would be the ONLY way I could ever convince them A Dell Optiplex is NOT a CAD/CAM PC. No matter what video card you slap in it.

[TK-32™]

So how long do you guys think it takes to build a computer? From throwing away the MOBO instructions to mastercam posting a program?

 

Hang on, let me get my calculator...

 

 

[TK-32™]

You guys might remember how it went about a month ago when I installed a SSD.

If I had the skills to build a PC with expensive parts in a reasonable time of course I'd do it too.

[Rotary Ninja]

From research to having a working PC takes a couple days if I buy at our local Fry's Electronics. Ordering parts online adds a couple days to that. After getting all the parts I can have one put together and sitting on the Windows desktop in less than an hour. It's not as hard as you might think to build a whole PC from start to finish. Most of the plugs only go in one place, And they are even making the front panel connectors easier for the average TK-32™ to figure out. That has always been the only thing I pull the motherboard book out for.

 

After I get the initial test fire done I install my software, run some benchmark tests, then I try to heat it up playing Call of Duty for a couple hours. After that I rip it all back apart and route the cables through the case and zip-tie everything to keep the cables out of the way for airflow purposes. This takes a couple hours to do it right. So if you take the research out of the equation, I can have a PC built and playing games a few hours after you place your order with Dell. And that's counting the drive to Fry's to get the parts.

[djstedman]

Well, guess this all depends on how comfortable you are with building your own pc..

 

There is no doubt that a solidboxx is a great rig.. that said at work we were having an argument about this very topic..

 

My rig was built from parts and we also got a solidboxx .. the solid boxx cost about 40 percent more overall and has similiar specs..

 

Mine beats it in running the mastercam benchmark (the newer one) by about 40 seconds.. definitly not a huge difference but ..

 

We have had both systems for about 6 months and neither one has had any problems..

 

For my own money I would build my own, but then again I have been building computers for a long time..

 

The one thing I would say though about all these comments about SolidBoxx like 'they just work' and 'they have great support' is that for the 40 percent more the SolidBoxx cost, for every two you bought that you put together yourself you could just about build a third as a backup..

 

If you arent comfortable building your own system though SolidBoxx is about the best your going to get..

[Trapper Paul]

Well boys thanks for the input.

 

I can;t wait to get my solid box....tired of the hassle with the 3 we have in the shop!

 

Our IT dept is off site and knows nothing about "shop" computers.

 

will keep you guys informed

 

Peace

Out

[Rotary Ninja]

Mine beats it in running the mastercam benchmark (the newer one) by about 40 seconds.. definitly not a huge difference but ..

 

Where is this at?

[Jayson Kramer]

I say if I have all the peaces to build the computer it takes me about 4 hours to get it all together install Windows and office and all updates and antivirus and mastercam and have it running.

 

I always rec-amend the Dells or solid box to my customers. I used to build them years back for allot of my Mastercam customers but not much profit these days and if one little thing is not how they like it boy this can turn in to a money looser.

 

But I used to make about $400.00 making rigs and setting up for the MC customers testing it and making sure it was fully ready to go. I would tell them up front I am charging more for testing so it was not a surprise.