[Bob La Londe]

Do you really consider this as an appropriate qualification for lecturing to others. You're joking, right?

In what way do the statements contained in the first two sentences qualify you to make the statement in the last sentence?

Phil

For every person there are a hundred who just went somewhere else.

That is learned from experience. I have been a businessman my entire life. When did you start?

Should I type slower?

[VaderSpade]

WHAT other side of the story can there be. I bought a brand new machine. I just want it to work as advertised.
What other motive could I have? If you follow my threads on other forums you’ll see I’ve been working up to getting a CNC for three years.

I just want to be making chips.

[VaderSpade]

I was a disc jockey when I was 15 and the first thing they teach you is that for everyone that calls the station there are 200 listeners that think the same way but will never call.

[philbur]

So are you saying what a kid does with his Christmas money is in some way relevant to how you think Tormach should react to this current situation? I guess I must be a bit slow, help me out.

You don't need to type slower but possibly you should think a bit more before you type.

Phil

For every person there are a hundred who just went somewhere else.

That is learned from experience. I have been a businessman my entire life. When did you start?

Should I type slower?

[philbur]

Have you ever listened to the same story, told in all sincerity, by both sides of a divorce?

Phil

WHAT other side of the story can there be. I bought a brand new machine. I just want it to work as advertised.
What other motive could I have? If you follow my threads on other forums you’ll see I’ve been working up to getting a CNC for three years.

I just want to be making chips.

[tbaker2500]

A few thoughts, take them or leave them, I don't care.

I am a business owner. (Started building it when I was 16, if that matters. :-) ) I've dealt with many unhappy customers, and many more extremely happy customers. There are two things that come into play, as I see it.
1. Sometimes, no matter what you do, it is impossible to get a certain piece of equipment working properly with a certain customer. It can be the customer. It can be the equipment. It can be the power, a ham radio operator next door, the migratory patterns of unladen swallows. Sometimes a problem is un-fixable. Since the OP has the machine running for 3 days without problem, it's rather hard to send a tech out to fix it, unless you want a live-in partner. Sometimes all a company can do is offer the money back, which Tormach has done.
2. The instant lawyers were mentioned, that guaranteed that Tormach will NEVER post to this thread. Any statements posted here, even with the best intentions, are matter of public record and no company would expose themselves to this liability.

Vader, I see only two possible paths forward for you, IMHO. One is return the machine, split the shipping with Tormach. Get it out of your life. Buy a different manufacturer's machine, and get on with your life. Or, take the jump to start using new XML files, new Mach installs, new computers, etc, and own the problem as one you want to resolve yourself, since it is clear that Tormach cannot resolve it.

For what it's worth,
Tom

[Doubleoh9]

This is just bad press for Tormach. As an owner of 2 Tormach mills, I would have questions if mybe these series 3 machines were not fully baked. Tormach could have eaten some cost in shipping and just replaced this unit. I imagine the cost would be small compared to the lost sales that will come from this thread. They would also have a good machine to find a possible bug. Bad business.

[LeeWay]

Guys, bickering will not get this machine going. Regardless of who is at fault, why not solve the problem, then place blame.
I still contend that the issue is a runaway crash initiated by the computer. this can be tested easily enough. I have several computers here that will not run Mach 3. they are perfectly suited to do other tasks, just don't communicate well enough with Mach.
I have 3 older IBM laptops that work great with Mach. These can be had for just over $100 on Ebay. Cheaper than a Lawyer, shipping, and service guy.

Just because Tormach might order these computers built to a certain standard does not mean that is what they always get. I feel there may be something timing out in the background that cause these crashes.
Again, I don't own a Tormach, but do own and love their tooling.

[Bob La Londe]

So are you saying what a kid does with his Christmas money is in some way relevant to how you think Tormach should react to this current situation? I guess I must be a bit slow, help me out.

You don't need to type slower but possibly you should think a bit more before you type.

Phil

You are mistaken. I obviously do need to type slowly by your own demonstration. You asked how it qualified me, not how it related to Tormach. What a kid does with his Christmas money may very well relate to lessons learned in life and business. They could qualify them to make statements from a lifetime of experience starting from that point such as, "For every person who complains there are a 100 who just went somewhere else."

Normally I would feel a little uncomfortable spelling it out for you in such detail. I would think a person of normal or better intelligence would think I was talking down to them. You did say in essence that you did not comprehend, so I do hope that you do not take offense at my helping you with your deficiencies and relational skills in this area.

Perhaps you are of normal intelligence or greater, but this is an area in which you have operational blinders. In that case I hope I have helped you to understand. If you don't. Please feel free to further demonstrate your lack of comprehension.

In regards to the 100+ who say its great, so there must be more to it. There certainly may be more to it...

... that doesn't mean the more to it isn't a real problem.

I say (slightly amended) again:

TORMACH. I CHALLENGE YOU TO COME ON THIS THREAD AND/OR FIX THIS PROBLEM.

No matter what it boils down to this. There is a problem with this machine, setup, or installation. Nobody seems to have a fix. While YOU might argue the OP could be making it all up, I think most rational people would tend to think that isn't very likely.

What is more likely is that the manufacture wants to have the customer pay the cost of return freight with no particular guarantee of a resolution, and the customer feels that is an unfair expense since they feel the machine has never worked properly.

So... Tormach can either go the extra mile to fix the problem, they can ignore the problem, or they can hire and train a department to say, "We apologize that you are having a problem. Lets see if we can fix it with platitudes like other companies do."

[LeeWay]

Okay.
My products do not cost as much as a Tormach. I only make blade guards for table saws. Different arena really.
I make custom blade guards, where Tormach provides machinery to certain specs.
If it is a CNC machine, it all needs to work.
When something isn't right with one of my customers, it becomes the priority. I will do whatever it takes to satisfy that customer. From working with him or her to fix it to replacing the unit to a full refund. None of that is out of bounds. I actually listen to my customers because I am a small company. I agree that Tormach should now stay out of the thread once the mention of Lawyers came about. How can we help the OP NOW? We really can't.

[philbur]

When I was a little kid I didn't blow my birthday money and Christmas money on junk. I bought merchandise and put it on the shelves in my parents grocery store to make more money. So don't give me fanboy rhetoric or something doesn't add up garbage.

You still haven't answered the question to the above statement. In what way do the statements contained in the first two sentences qualify you to make the statement in the last sentence? Note that you have linked them by the qualifying adverb "So".

While YOU might argue the OP could be making it all up, I think most rational people would tend to think that isn't very likely.

I and nobody else have argued that the OP is making it up. You put words in my mouth that were never said. In all your many years as a "business man" have you never heard the phrase: "there are two sides to every story."

If you must use derogatory names like fanboy, and call another persons’ opinion garbage, then you really need to take more care how you go about it.

This is my last word on the matter.
Phil

[rowbare]

I think everybody needs to take a couple of deep breaths here. This thread is getting way too inflammatory and that isn't serving anyone's interests.

Unfortunately you are stuck with a spurious error where there is no clear pattern to reproduce the error. These are extremely difficult to troubleshoot especially remotely. It also seems that this particular fault falls outside of anything Tormach has seen to date so while you are understandably frustrated by their apparent lack of solutions they can't fix what they can't see. The margins on an $8500 machine simply don't allow for taking an engineer offline to fly around the country. Hopefully your relationship with them isn't irreparably damaged.

Off my soapbox now... From what you have described, I don't think it is a hardware issue, you have jiggled every wire that needs jiggling many times over so we can probably rule that out.

Power may or may not be an issue if the voltage fluctuations are such that an under or over voltage might cause a drive that is at the outer limits of its tolerance range to fault or cause a controller board fault.

This brings us back to the control computer and perhaps, and this is a long shot, the main control board in the mill. My suggestion for a next step is:

See if Tormach will send you one of their machine controller computers -- maybe they will sell you one with the understanding that if it doesn't fix your problem they will take it back. If the machine fails using it, it is clearly a Tormach issue (assuming you have ruled out power issues). If it fixes it, then you can move forward. As a long shot, you might also ask them to supply a replacement control board on the off chance there is something wrong with yours (flipped bit in the eprom?).

Every morning when I see there are new posts in this thread I hope you have posted that you have gotten things working to your satisfaction.

good luck
bob

[photomankc]

From the limited perspective I can get on this from the thread, and speaking as myself. Were I Tormach, I think my offer would be to refund the mill and split the return shipping without a restocking fee. They are not going to pay him for lost time, business, or broken tools. I wouldn't either and a lawyer is not going to get it. The fact is that the business model here is not one of on-site service and repair and the warranty is clear that it covers user replacement of defective parts. All that said, sometimes it's in both parties interest to dial down the outrage, return the product (or take it back) and move on. I'm not sure that Vader is in a mindset to go on troubleshooting tediously each and every aspect of a mill that has not seemed to work correctly out of the box and really that's why people pay for a Tormach. Tormach on the other hand is offering a big bench-top CNC mill at much more affordable price than any other production-type VMC so I think the expectations need to be set accordingly. A return without restock and partial shipping is the BEST I would even expect.

Personally I would build a new control PC and try some other control software to see if this persists when I can tweak accel, step rate, pulse duration, ect. Boxing that thing back up to return it is going to take a nice long time and it's going to cost a bit too and I would be keen to do what I could to avoid it, but then I don't have work walking away from me either.

[philbur]

I think the OP said earlier in this thread, or maybe the other one, that Tormach had already provided a substitute computer and control board, along with new control software and xml file. I don't recall him saying he had tried a replacement parallel cable though. However I believe that all the obvious possibles have already been looked at.

Phil

[VaderSpade]

Thanks Bob, we've tried two computers and three control boards already. I either have several problems, or this is a Mach problem.

[photomankc]

Yes that's right..... forgot that. I really don't see much else to do but swap the whole mill or return it. I can understand a vendors reluctance to do so, but at this point if they offered that I'd say they had done all that they can reasonably do.

[Winnfield]

Maybe time for the first servo conversion on a Tormach.

[photomankc]

Thanks Bob, we've tried two computers and three control boards already. I either have several problems, or this is a Mach problem.

Would you be willing to try out EMC2 (LinuxCNC). Getting the basics going (X/Y/Z Spindle and Limits) should be "reasonably" simple to do. I can understand not wanting to wade into that though.

[VaderSpade]

Warrantees are not written for the consumer they are written to protect the manufacture. But the same way signing a waver does NOT protect a zip line company from gross negligence; no warrantee protects the manufacture from selling dead on arrival products.

If that were the case fraud would run rampant, there are consumer laws that protect us from such practices.

This machine has not work correctly from day one, please explain to me why I should be out anything?? Why should I be required to pay even half of the return cost? I have built a shop for this mill, and I’m out at least $1,000.00 in tooling and parts, not to mention my time and lost sleep.

I was sold a defective product this is no longer a warrantee issue.

[VaderSpade]

Would you be willing to try out EMC2 (LinuxCNC). Getting the basics going (X/Y/Z Spindle and Limits) should be "reasonably" simple to do. I can understand not wanting to wade into that though.

I would be willing to try, but it has been made clear to me that doing anything (including taking advice from a board that Tormach sponsors) would void my warrantee.