[wmgeorge]

Avid is the high end of the hobby "kit" market, and they are good enough that some folks use them in their businesses. Hard to beat that.

I agree to that and they are accurate enough to be used Commercially and are making money without the added milling steps.

So what have you been making with yours?

[GME]

So what have you been making with yours?

Nothing lately. I had an issue with my E-Stop that surfaced when i did some wiring revisions to get rid of some noise in my control box. The noise problem surfaced when I was using the Mach4 "Touch" screen to set X,Y=0. The steel dowel I was using as the "probe" would touch, and then stop and end the routine. I could get it to work by setting the noise filter to 5000 units, which is a lot. After doing some work in the box, I got it to work consistently with 0 filtering. Anyway, I decided to test everything. I haven't used my E-Stop since I migrated to Mach4. When I tested it, I found it would trip, but would not reset. After days of fooling with it, I found there was an issue with the interaction with the charge pump. When I hit the E-Stop, it faulted the charge pump and would not reset. It would reset if I closed Mach and then reopened it, but fault again, if I triggered the E-Stop. I was able to rule out my BOB as the culprit by loading Mach3. Things worked as they should under Mach3. So, it was either a Mach4 issue, or an issue with my ESS. Without getting into the weeds too far, the evidence points to the ESS. I works with Warp9 on their forum, but we never got to how to fix the problem. Fortunately, the Charge Pump is superfluous when not using a parallel port, and my BOB (PMDX-126) allows turning off the Charge Pump by just a flip of a DIP switch. When I disabled the Charge Pump, all worked as it should.

I have a couple of projects coming up. One is to make 22 rosettes for my master bedroom and sitting room door and window trim. The other is to make some drawer boxes for some shop cabinets. I'm going to use Jointcam and use box joints to put them together. Since I'm using plywood for the boxes, box joints work better then dovetail. Dovetails in plywood are possible (I've made them), but they can be relatively week. It will be my go around with Jointcam. I'm looking forward.

Another project that's a little further out is to build what is called an MFTC. It's a portable cutting station/work station designed by a very bright fellow in Belgium. I need a better cutting table to breakdown plywood. Here's a rendering of it. The plans include auxiliary tables to extend its size. Very handy and it doesn't take up much room. If you aren't familiar with the Festool MFT, the holes in the table top are 20mm in diameter and take bench dogs used for Festool track saws and other accessories.



Here's a link to a video, if it's something you find interesting:



Now that the whether has driven me indoors, I'm back to remodel projects. I have a large house, so they will probably continue until I'm too old to do them. On the plus side, I'm never bored in retirement.

Gary