-Jamman, you would'nt want this one. It's a Max NC. Designed from the ground up for robusticity and feature rich with cutting edge technology, this chip warrior comes with 1/4-20 threaded rod leadscrews, annodized aluminum dovetail slides, nylon "bushings", skateboard style spindle bearings, and a motor from a diegrinder. I offered a 100 bucks for it but the chiefs up front said no. The fire burned the circuit board, wires and the rubberband that was the drive belt. On the other hand it has a vise.

All this talk of viruses and guess what? my girlfriend got hit with the latest one called "w32sircam"? something like that. Made her program files folder dissappear, renamed win32rundll.exe to win32, and tried to use her computer as a virus server. Got 6 copies of it herself (one as I watched.) I also got to watch Norton quarentine and delete it. Her webmaster friends got 40 or so doses of this thing a day for the last couple of days.

"Uh huh huh huh -welding's like cool!" We had a desktop mill right behind the computers that caught on fire ("heh heh fire!") it hasn't worked since and still sits there. Piece of junk.

Another great anti virus program is IRIS AntiVirus. Developed by the Israeli military this stuff is the bomb! and used to have 99.9% efectivity. When I was using it you had to lease it. I'd rather have a disk in my hand instead. So I use Norton instead and get free updates. We have Mcafee at the job and it's ok. I shut it off though as well as the cheap antivirus in the motherboard chipset. Lot's of newbies run both at the same time and complain of a slow computer.

Try this instead... G90 G80 G49 G40 G17 G55 T1 M6 S1000 M3 G43 H1 Z.1 M8 G1 Z-.5 F50. X-2. F20. G0 Z.1 M5 M9 G91 G28 Z0. G28 Y0. G90 G55 G0 X0. M30 good luck

In my opinion Mc Afee sucks up a lot of resources. I use Norton at home and I firewall with Black ice.

Great!! I'm glad things are working.

Go to these sites and download: http://ftp.globalnet.co.uk/simtel.net/msdos/qmodem-pre.html http://www.univie.ac.at/simtel.net/msdos/qmodem.html http://download.uni-hd.de/ftp/pub/simtelnet/msdos/qmodem/ I have had things corrupt in email before. have fun

What does your parting line have to look like? do you have geometry we can see?

Ditto. HP's are tough. Ours got sprayed with a fire extinguisher and still works.

Didn't think of it. Thanks!!

Haven't used a Maho but I have a lot of experience communicating with funky machines. try these; -check all protocol bindings (baud rate, com port, parity, stop bit, data bit settings.) Make sure what is going out is what the machine wants to see. _check all connections for tightness. -use a good cord. (Belkin is good) as short as possible. Don't hang it on the floresecent lights. -if you are using Mcam's communicator, select DOS mode and echo terminal emulation. -set EOL to delay. Start at say .03 and increase in tenth second increments. The goal here is to match sync rates between machine and computer. -try the Dos version of QMODEM SST. The new windows version is full of junk. Dos is the simplest way to and from your computer and machine. If you can't find one, I can email you a copy. good luck

If your machine has a good amount of buffer memory you can "capture" the remainder of the program and with it possibly the area in which you need to restart proviving that you use the proper header commands. Doing the "cut and paste" can get pretty tedious in a large program. I once taped down the mouse button at my scroll point for 15 min to edit out all the uneeded code. You could also restart the entire program and floor the feedrate until you get to where you left off.

This is a very interesting subject. I have thoughts of applying for a research grant.

I took a survey in our shop. I asked a white programmer, two latin programmers, and an asian machinist. There were no afro-americans or women to be found. I asked them why do they think that there aren't many "minorities" in programming. The answers were: "maybe we're afraid of computers...", "machines are hard to program.." "that's a good question.." "I have a family and no real time for school.." "If I were 19 and outta school I would try to become a lawyer or a doctor and make the big money instead of getting dirty all day..." "some of them have no mechanical aptitude and lack the ability to plan ahead.." "english is a problem.." "due to hot software some might be afraid to step out and be noticed.." "it's easy for them to pick up the language because they are so close to the u.s. but we are very far away from this country and it's much harder to pick up.." "they're just lazy and want to sit down and get free money and not work hard for it.." Sorry if this offends anybody, but these are some of the answers I recieved. Just asking these questions was sometimes difficult as I am not fluent in other languages. I might offer that: *Mastercam can be configured for many different languages. *In S Cal. the NTMA offers CNC programming classes free of charge to employees. (I wanted to take one on parametric programming but I am in a band and have little time also.) *In this trade generally the money comes rolling in after about 10 years or so of experience. (A few years earlier if you leap frog.) Compare to other professions. *Children who are not exposed to things mecanical in the early stages of development and who are shunned away by comments like "that's for smart people..." and "you don't want to do that.." (apply other negatives here), are less likely to develop mechanical abilites and the desire to do so. *Consider also the state wide closures of machining classes in high schools. Wood shop is generally still available and is in my opinion a more dangerous profession. I could go on and on but let's here from the rest of the guys on the board?