[Erik Brinkman]

I am building 3 factories ... one in Denver, on in Holland and one in Korea.
Our entire company is Mac only. We don't even hire Windows People.
I am needing Vertical Mills, Horizontal Mills, Lathes and Hemp Saws .... all CNC.

I need to know 2 things ....
1. Who makes the highest quality most accurate CNC machines ?
2. How do I hook them to a Mac only system ?

[ihavenofish]

I am building 3 factories ... one in Denver, on in Holland and one in Korea.
Our entire company is Mac only. We don't even hire Windows People.
I am needing Vertical Mills, Horizontal Mills, Lathes and Hemp Saws .... all CNC.

I need to know 2 things ....
1. Who makes the highest quality most accurate CNC machines ?
2. How do I hook them to a Mac only system ?

1: define accurate whats yore price range and envelope?
2: put an ad out for a windows expert. many new cnc mills run it on the control is and most cad/cam apps require is. the remaining will use some variety of linux, unix, ms-dos or a custom OS.

theres probably some obscure controls and software that might use mac, but its highly unlikely they will go hand in hand with "highest quality and most accurate".

[daedalus]

That is a rather silly policy to have considering the vast amount of software that isnt available for mac os. If you have some kind of windows phobia, there are options to drive the mills from linux using EMC, but you still need to run your cad and cam software, which is predominantly windows only.

Put simply the majority of CAD packages are not ported to macs because there is such a small market for them (the mac user base tending to be non-technical), and because if you can afford $8k a seat for the software, you can probably afford a pc workstation to go with it.

Its not possible to answer 1 unless you tell us about what parts you want to make, out of what materials, with what tolerances.

[Erik Brinkman]

Let me resolve the "finest quality" aspect of the question first,
then I will resolve the programming needed to update the software.

So ....
I am looking for the sexiest, highest quality, most precise machinery.
I am looking for both opinions and the reasoning leading to the conclusions.

[Erik Brinkman]

We re linked to IDS-Research. R&D can't afford freeze-ups and viruses and all the other primitive nasty Windows things. The Best CAD software for many years in a row is Maya, which is Mac. The best overall software like PhotoShop (all Adobe products) used to be Mac-only. There is a huge amount of extremely high quality software that is Mac. If we had to we could run Mac and Windows on the same screen at the same time and drag-n-drop between them since Mac will run any OS, but the Mac OS is much cleaner. (The kernel in Windows is corrupt, and Windows has hidden back doors which allows viruses to enter thru Word, Excel or PowerPoint and many other Software Applications). It is just too risky for us. In the 24 years we have used MAC in R&D, we have never had a freeze-up, virus, worm, trojan horse etc. Mac has never had a successful viral attack in spite of the rumors. Most of the laptops sold in the world are MAC. It is far more capable than you might suspect. It is certainly far safer and more stable.

We can update the old Windows crap to Mac, but it takes some reprogramming.

The most importnt thing is to use the finest machinery we can get.
That was a far more important part of the overall question.

[ihavenofish]

Let me resolve the "finest quality" aspect of the question first,
then I will resolve the programming needed to update the software.

So ....
I am looking for the sexiest, highest quality, most precise machinery.
I am looking for both opinions and the reasoning leading to the conclusions.

wow, you are a mac person.

hmm, let me try to phrase this in steve jobs speak...

what the heck do you want the machine to do!? ok, that was me speak...

whats accurate? .001? .0001? sub micron? does it need repeatability or precision. what about temperature stability? what materials are you cutting? its this high speed operations or can it take all week for a part?

price... $1000, $100000, $1000000? how big does it need to be? 20x40? bigger? jewelry sized? how bout axis movement, 3, 4, 5? synchronous 4th and 5th?

THERES NO SUCH THING AS DPI ON THE WEB!!!!

err.. sorry, that last one is reflex.







or if you just want shiny, get a DMG DMU-40 with glass scales and laser tool setup.

http://dmgcanada.com/us,milling,dmu4...K?opendocument

actually, its a bad ass machine for aerospace, and is "relatively" cheap at under 300k cdn. but yes... it runs on windows.

[John Welden]

Unfortunately I don't think there are any Mac cam packages. Everyone is stuck using the far inferior Windoze.

[ihavenofish]

We re linked to IDS-Research. R&D can't afford freeze-ups and viruses and all the other primitive nasty Windows things. The Best CAD software for many years in a row is Maya, which is Mac. The best overall software like PhotoShop (all Adobe products) used to be Mac-only. There is a huge amount of extremely high quality software that is Mac. If we had to we could run Mac and Windows on the same screen at the same time and drag-n-drop between them since Mac will run any OS, but the Mac OS is much cleaner. (The kernel in Windows is corrupt, and Windows has hidden back doors which allows viruses to enter thru Word, Excel or PowerPoint and many other Software Applications). It is just too risky for us. In the 24 years we have used MAC in R&D, we have never had a freeze-up, virus, worm, trojan horse etc. Mac has never had a successful viral attack in spite of the rumors. Most of the laptops sold in the world are MAC. It is far more capable than you might suspect. It is certainly far safer and more stable.

We can update the old Windows crap to Mac, but it takes some reprogramming.

The most importnt thing is to use the finest machinery we can get.
That was a far more important part of the overall question.

um, maya isnt CAD, its animation software. and it runs like complete crap on the mac. in fact, its so bad that Pixar.. owned by steve jobs does NOT use mac for animation. mac has largely been shunned by the cg industry simply because nothing runs on it.

alias studio tools is their design software, and while powerful, under their new autodesk ownership will be phased out for all platforms but windows in the near future.

the "best" cad package is usually considered catia, thought the 20k+ entry price is a bit much for most shops. solidworks is its little brother and i think is said to have the most seats worldwide. both apps are windows based. catia does/did have a unix version but it was phased out.

and photoshop... is anything but the best for image editing and every release it gets worse. sadly its a so called standard so we get forced to use it. and yes, it runs faster on windows, sorry.

i have 12 mac pros in my studio, they all run windows. we only got them cause they were cheap. and just to note: never get viruses on my pc.. and the macs in osx mode crash and freeze 10 times as often as the pc.. which is sad cause they dont even run anything!

as for rewiting software for mac... good luck with that.
not to be mean, but i hope youre not in charge of actually buying production machinery for your company. if you are, you need to learn a lot about machining in general before even getting to the questions you are trying to ask.

[John Welden]

and photoshop... is anything but the best for image editing and every release it gets worse. sadly its a so called standard so we get forced to use it.

Too bad windoze is the standard we all get forced to use. Same goes for Fanuc. Complete crap that became industry standard. Makes me sick that a big part of my life is spent using these terrible products. Ignorant fools think these tools must be the best since everyone uses them.

[stevespo]

Erik, I'm actually a big Mac fan, but you've really got to get your facts straight. According to Ars Technica, Apple notebook sales in 2008 gave them a 4.6% market share. Hardly "most of the laptops in the world".

My friends in IT say that potentially XP/Vista are the most secure desktop platform going. The reason there are viruses is the 90% market share. Nobody cares about the Mac or Linux, but they also have abundant security holes.

As far as stable goes. I run Ubuntu/XP on a dual boot Dell laptop, and I'm surrounded by other engineers and MacOS X. They are crashing on a regular (sometimes daily) basis, while I go months without needing a reboot. I don't mean application crash, I mean system crash. I keep sessions going forever and hibernate/resume between them.

You obviously have reasons for your technical needs, but they're a bit removed from reality. You want the "sexiest" CNC machine? How about the Heidi Klum 2009 from Victoria's CNC Secrets? That was a weak joke - sorry.

Are you trolling? Are you seriously looking for help and advice? The people here are very willing to give it. Just provide more information and we'll do our best.

Steve

[ihavenofish]

Too bad windoze is the standard we all get forced to use. Same goes for Fanuc. Complete crap that became industry standard. Makes me sick that a big part of my life is spent using these terrible products. Ignorant fools think these tools must be the best since everyone uses them.

in my experience, and i have a fair bit, windows IS superior to osx for the type of work i do. osx in fact is borderline unusable with 3d software.

for the email and web surfing masses, windows is also perfectly fine.. and so is mac.

the ignorant fools i find are the ones who hold a bias for one platform or another that has no basis in reality. use what works. period. for CNC, thats largely been windows in the last decade from the low end with mach, to the high end fanuc, heidenhain, and siemens controls on multi million dollar machines and nearly every cad and cam system available.

[daedalus]

Maya really isnt an engineering tool, its a modelling package for artists. If you go try solidworks you will start to see the big differences in feature set. Are you just looking for an easy approach to getting physical models of your parts, rather then mass production?

Dont take this the wrong way, but it doesnt sound like you have much experience with cnc, and you might be better off getting a rapid protoyping machine for your r&d, then outsourcing production. RP machines are pretty much plug and play, and you would be up and running in a few days.

[beege]

Erik,

Try looking into Linux/Unix. Suse comes to mind right away. As secure as Mac, and there are some CAD/CAM packages available for it as well. I bet you'd come up with some interesting solutions.

As far as machines go, although I'd opt for Mori Seiki ALL of the time for Milling/Lathe, and don't have a clue as far as WEDM, I'd very much consider the support available for these. If the support is questionable, then I'd go somewhere else.

[Erik Brinkman]

Maya really isnt an engineering tool, its a modelling package for artists. If you go try solidworks you will start to see the big differences in feature set. Are you just looking for an easy approach to getting physical models of your parts, rather then mass production?

Dont take this the wrong way, but it doesnt sound like you have much experience with cnc, and you might be better off getting a rapid protoyping machine for your r&d, then outsourcing production. RP machines are pretty much plug and play, and you would be up and running in a few days.

Maya goes from sketching thru 2,3,4D CAD and uses NERBS.
We connect it well to FEA software.

[Erik Brinkman]

Maya goes from sketching thru 2,3,4D CAD and uses NERBS.
We connect it well to FEA software.

This is for mass production of 1000 engines per month.
The tolerances need to be very accurate
because of our use of both ceramics and Cobalt-Tungsten alloys

[John Welden]

in my experience, and i have a fair bit, windows IS superior to osx for the type of work i do. osx in fact is borderline unusable with 3d software.

Any unusable 3d software for mac is not the fault of the OS.

From an OS standpoint, there is nothing superior about Windoze. XP and Vista are in the dark ages and complete junk.

Our company of 200 people has four dedicated IT guys too keep our crap windoze systems running. Windoze is so pathetic that there is a whole multi billion dollar industry just to support it and make it work. The amount of lost productivity is mind blowing.

[Erik Brinkman]

Erik, I'm actually a big Mac fan, but you've really got to get your facts straight. According to Ars Technica, Apple notebook sales in 2008 gave them a 4.6% market share. Hardly "most of the laptops in the world".

My friends in IT say that potentially XP/Vista are the most secure desktop platform going. The reason there are viruses is the 90% market share. Nobody cares about the Mac or Linux, but they also have abundant security holes.

As far as stable goes. I run Ubuntu/XP on a dual boot Dell laptop, and I'm surrounded by other engineers and MacOS X. They are crashing on a regular (sometimes daily) basis, while I go months without needing a reboot. I don't mean application crash, I mean system crash. I keep sessions going forever and hibernate/resume between them.

You obviously have reasons for your technical needs, but they're a bit removed from reality. You want the "sexiest" CNC machine? How about the Heidi Klum 2009 from Victoria's CNC Secrets? That was a weak joke - sorry.

Are you trolling? Are you seriously looking for help and advice? The people here are very willing to give it. Just provide more information and we'll do our best.

Steve

4.6 is the overall computer share for desktop units excluding laptops and servers. They did not get their facts straight. There is a lot of misinformation out there.

[Erik Brinkman]

There is an old idea that Windows is virus ridden because they are so popular.
Windows can get viruses because of its architecture. (Viruses for Windows are almost always written on a MAC). Windows is known as primitive, virus prone and kernel corrupt. If you have a MAC freeze issue in your organization, have the MACs do a self diagnostic and let the computer fix itself. To easy. If you do software updates and never use "disk Utility" to make sure everything is in order, then it is like driving your car for years without doing a checkup. I had friend not do updates for 2 years and when he finally went thru the 4 cycles of updates it took to get up to current status, he had to run the disk utility to be sure all the pieces were properly recognizing each other.
A MAC freeze is just a sign of a sloppy computer owner, nothing to do with the OSX.

PS- MAya is still the highest rated CAD and rendering software ... nice because it combines both rendering and CAD and hooks well to CAM and FEA. It is an ALIAS product, the folks who gave us Alias Sketch and other lovely pieces.

[Erik Brinkman]

So ... I want to hook MAYA to a MAC CAM package rather than a WINDOWS CAM package.
I can have my programmers write the code, but I'd d rather not have them spend the time.

Someone needs to offer a package that can take a Windows app and rewrite it as a MAc app and toss all the nasty pieces.

PS- to the guy who hates the newer versions of Photoshop. A lot of the power and smoothness is lost when you run it on a Windows box. Many of the functions are alsonot offered on the Windows version.

I shall look into Mori Seiki, fanuc, heidenhain, and siemens for CNC.
Thanks for that. Any further input on that ?
I am setting up the Denver factory to start operation in the fall
and need the engine shop to be up and running at the same time.
We are only expecting to need just under 14k made in the first year
so it is not a huge shop, but I want the best stuff.
I want the shop clean quiet smooth
and I want the quality of the machines to impress any visitors as being the best.
We are making the highest quality motorcycles in the world
(Kevlar bodywork, ceramic-kevlar 20 plate clutch, SS frame, Cobalt-Tugnsten alloy engine parts)
and all aspects of our efforts must reflect that level of quality.

http://www.PantherMotorcycle.com

[stevespo]

Erik,

I hate to disagree, especially since this has nothing to do with CNC - but you need to spend a few minutes and do your own research. Multiple sources have 4.6% as the overall Apple notebook market share (as of 06/2008).

Even if the numbers are flawed, are you seriously contending that Apple has a "majority" share of the notebook market? Really? Sales may have risen 61%, but they're still only #7 overall.

Can we please talk CNC? These juvenile OS battles are a waste of time.

Steve

Direct from AppleInsider and DisplaySearch research:

http://www.appletell.com/apple/comme...ipping-near-5/
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/20...-worldwide.ars
http://www.macdailynews.com/index.ph...omments/17565/