Why CNC?

[Robin Hewitt]

But I have to chuckle:- I entered this forum with people applauding the task of automating PCB manufacture. Now the roles have reversed, and you're all trying to disuade me from doing it!

Au contraire, I'm totally selfish and want you to succeed with as few pre-conceived notions as possible.

I don't want you getting bogged down recreating things that are of no use to me, I want you to come up with novel solutions to old problems so I can pinch your ideas, fix your mistakes and make a better one :rofl:

[saxonhawthorn]

My Dear Robin,

When I have totally exhausted my energies on stepper drivers, please feel entirely free to brief me all about those old problems which need novel solutions, and with a glass of Christmas cheer in my hand (or probably more like Easter cheer by the time I get there) I shall enjoy nothing more than cranking-up the little grey cells.

FWIW I was taught workshop practice fifty years ago by one George Stevenson, grandson of the man who invented the railway. Everything he made - in any medium at all - was both beautiful to look at and perfectly efficient. Genius ran in the family. I'd encourage anybody who hasn't done so to take a look at the Stevenson linkage for reversing a steam engine: it's a perfect example of a brilliantly simple but elegant solution to a very real and practical problem. That's the kind of approach to engineering that has inspired me all my life, and I'm never content with anything I have made until it reaches that same high standard. I don't always reach it but I try, I try.

A very Happy Christmas to all here. May your swarf never tangle and your bearings never jangle.

Ian