[billcain]

"john" or whomever you are

I am sorry and did not mean to offend you. We could go back and forth quoting our resumes and experiance and offending each other. I will only say that I have 20 years of experance with Swiss machine that has not been behind a desk and most of that with Star machines.

Hopefully you find software that satisfies you at some point.

Bill Cain

it is not the point of not liking the code your posts produce. the code is WRONG. machines will not work the way they are posted from your software. i will say it again, once we informed you of several mistakes, you then corrected the post and reissued it as a new revision.

i have 30+ years of experience setting up, running and programming machine tools.

honestly, we have posted out code for four different machines and every one of them had alarms or were stopped before they crashed.

we work hand and hand with the machine tool builders and some of the changes we have suggested to the machine tool builders have been put into the ladders for new machines.

please don't insult us, machinist/programmers by saying somebody who sits behind a desk reading from a machines operation manual knows more about how equipment operates.

you know your software but partmaker does not know how these machines run.

what confused me is how when i was at a partmaker training class about a year ago, the individual who runs your training department has never ran or set up a lathe. he told us he operated a wire edm machine.

[Glenn Ellis]

Hello John. Normally I don’t reply to postings like yours but prospective customers may read your posting so I thought it best to reply with a short review of my experience. I have 17 years in the progressive die industry; Programming and operating Haas Mills and Charmilles wire machines, running a CNC department of 11 machines and 4 employees. In addition 5 of those years were designing the progressive dies. I taught in the public school system for 2 years before coming to PartMaker. As lead trainer for PartMaker CAM software I travel both domestic and internationally training new customers the basics and giving existing customers advanced training. I really love what I do.
As a teacher I know that people (teens or adults) can come to a class with preconceived ideas about a subject or product, or an attitude against it. I would recommend you come back in for training to go over things that you may have missed. Our sales department maybe able to arrange that at a reduced cost or even free. Please contact them at your convenience.
Glenn Ellis

[Joe Navarro]

I bought Partmaker a few years ago. I love the software. I tried the demo and it looked great. In fact, I had my office manager follow the demo dierctions and she was able to write a program. I did this to make sure the software was user friendly and that any new programer we hired could learn the sofware well without any excuses.
BUT THE POST IS SCREWED UP AND WAS SCREWED UP FROM DAY 1.
We paid for posts on all our Citizens. They never worked right. We paid for support year after year, specifically to address post issues. They never fixed it.
Now, our programmers cant use the software because the post doesn't work. Partmaker refuses to help.
I feel this way about things: If I charge a customer for a part, it had better be right. I can't tell my customer, Hey, that's your problem. Live with it. Even when we ran parts that were in inventory at the customer's location for a year, if there was ever a problem, we ALWAYS took care of it. Not so with Partmaker.
I hope partmaker reads this. They need to make good on their work and fix our posts that were paid for. As long as I programed using Partmaker, I worked around the problems. But the programmers I hired can't and don't want to work around the post. I had one very talented programmer who specifically said he WOULD NOT use partmaker because they would not support their post. He uses another software program.
The machine dealer we bought our machines from told me, after I bought the software, that their applications department refuses to use partmaker because of this problem.

This is how I feel: If I paid for something this expensive, it should work. If it doesn't, the company needs to fix it, no questions asked. Same service I give our customers. They cashed my check, took our credit card and gave us a non-operative post that negates the value of the overall product. What good is CNC software if your post does not work?
support and got nowhere.

If anybody can give me support at a reasonable cost let me know.
C-32 & L-20. Unless Partmaker fixes their posts, I cannot recommend the software to anyone.

[billcain]

Hi Joe,

Because of what you said I looked up your records. I don't mean anything by this but to find out where the situation stands. As I always say, I do care people are happy with PartMaker. You had 13 total support records. I will email more exact information to you if you want.

Operator Error 6
Post Fix 2
Post Enhancement 2
Asked for information from Customer with no reply 1
Support 2

13 total record in 4 years. Thats not really a lot of records for someone who had as many issues as you indicate. Also, the majority of those records came down to operator error in settings. This can cause of lot of issue with people not having faith in the software as you descibe.

If you would like, I can talk with Brian Disley and discuss these issues with him and you to help see what we can do from our end. Please let me know.

[Joe Navarro]

I'm going to take you up on this offer. Get my posts to work and you have a loyal fan. Call me or send me an e-mail.
I've always been an advocate of your software,but now I have programers working in the shop and they refuse to work with it because of the post.
Make these posts plug and play so our programers can use it and you'll have three more new fans also.

[Joe Navarro]

By the way, just to prove our point, we went the extra mile. I was out sick and we contracted on an emergency basis to have you guys write a simple program for us. You charged us for this as it was not a service you perform. But the program did not work. I had to end up correcting it as we always do. (work around the non-operative sections of the post) You had the ser no of the machine, etc. There was no excuse on your part.

I also noticed that I complained twice about the post but it was not addressed. Thank you for the reminder. Maybe you will finally fix the post and make sure it works this time before sending it back to me.

I'm a bit upset that the answer I've gotten from Partmaker is that we have to "catch up" with a maintenance fees in order to get the posts fixed. I say, fix the post and then I'll decide if I want the maintenance without my back against the wall.

We haven't used your software since we stopped paying maintenace because I don't write the programs now. We have programers and they are not as familiar with the citizens as I am, which is why it is IMPERATIVE THAT THE POSTS WORK RIGHT. A set up guy doesn't have to become an engineering guru just to get partmaker to work after a company has invested over 20K into it. It should work right out of the gate. Otherwise, don't market your software for swiss machines. Its false advertising. I want my posts to work the way your tutorial works. That is what you advertised to me, that is what you promised me, and that's what we paid for.

Why was my office manager ableto do the tutorial and post comes out right but a 40 year veteran can't get your bona fide sofware to work the same way (after having put down the real money, by the way).

I even offered to work with you guys to get it right--you guys can work on the post till you get it right by using our shop. But every time we tried to get help it was the same result. No go. I have a shop to run and can't do your job and my job too.

I'm putting this here to let people know...we didn't use your software for the past 18 months or so. And you guys want us to pay a maintenance fee. Why pay a fee for services not rendered? Fix the posts first, which were paid for, and then we'll get back on board without having my back against the wall. I feel like like you guys are twisting my arm.

Why are you competing against me when I have to compete with China? Why do I have to pay you for a product and then have to pay you for support just to get it to work?

Come on you guys. Be fair and make this right. We'll pay for maintenance when you do what you were contracted to do by giving us a post that works.

I don't mean anything by this, but I think that if you pay for a service or a product you should get what you pay for. If I paid Partmaker for Citizen posts and I alerted you on numerous occassions that they were not working right, then you should have made good then, or at least now and not demand more money.

[billcain]

Hi Joe,

You bring up some good points. I understand you want things to work as expected.

In Talking with Brian Disley, I also have some points to mention.

1. The most recent post versions were supplied at no cost to you.
2. To my knowledge, noone there has been formally trained to use PartMaker. These machines are as you know complecated. Getting trained in the software is important to get correct code.

That said, I will offer to help, but I will have to do some in my personal time as you are not on maintenance.

What I would like to do here is the following:

1. You guys program a part in PartMaker.
2. Send me the Job files you programmed.
3. I will review them, make changes needed and document them for you with full explanations.
4. I will send the files back with this information.
5. You run this on machine and let me know what the results are.
6. I will fix anything that needs to be fixed in the post.


My expectations are: If we notice that the main issues are because of lack of training, I expect to see your guys at training and your company back on maintenance.

If it does not seem like a lack of Training, but I help get you where you need to be, I also expect you to be back on maintenance which you will see we have continued to improve the software.

If after a reasonable amout of time your still unsatisfied, I will understand this.

Please however be patient as I will be doing this in my personal time.

You can email me at [email protected] with the files and any questions.

Thank you Joe for allowing me to help you guys.

[billcain]

Hi Joe, Just checking to see if you got me email as yours was placed in my spam folder where I dont check often. Thanks