Three things of interest today. First up is helical Solutions. http://www.harveytool.com/cms/News20150827PressRelease_383.aspx will take you to a press release. Of greater interest for me was the idea that they would be better funded by a company that sells small things and Helical can supply the larger things. I prefer helical tools and the only reason they have not seen greater use in the past in my shop was due to a problem that much to my delight has gone away.
Martin Supply was who I was sent to originally and the main office in Sheffield AL was where I was sent to. The experience was very poor with no stocked tools and quite frankly sales people that were unaware they even were a vendor for Helical. So time passes and I download the latest Milling Advisor http://www.1helical.com/index.php/milling-advisor and I get a call from Helical welcoming me and offering help with any questions. To make a long story short things have changed and now the Tennessee Helical vendor is Martin Supply from Nashville http://www.mscoinc.com/MIS/Contact_Us/index.html and here is a page to take you to contact info. I am very happy to report the prices are good, there is stock on hand for a lot of situations and actually had a sales rep (that knew what he was talking about!) out here which is not so common. It is a drive to get here. They beat my current vendor on a half inch reduced shank long reach endmill by 25% with an endmill that I prefer so looks like all my Helical complaints are history.
Autodesk has a rather large update for inventor and Inventor Pro HSM http://cam.autodesk.com/inventor-hsm-experimental/ and in spite of the warning they issue about experimental many use it right away and have no problems. If you do it is always simple to step back to the prior working version. There are some goodies in here that merit you at least having a look. My download is going as I type and I will be deploying tonight.
Solid Edge will see the end of it’s discounts for SEU 2015 the end of this month. Even if you pay full ticket I believe the event is only $600.00 and you can find a local much cheaper hotel to stay at than the official $$$ SE partner hotels. http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/about_us/events_webinars/solid-edge-university/
In some ways ST8 is a mixed bag for me. Assemblies are giving me problems and I guess I am a pariah over in the SE world now. I have had an assembly question on the forum with plenty of time for someone to respond and no answer is forthcoming. Who knows why but in any case the rest of the program just does what it is supposed to without problems so I can live with this. I even have CW4SE loaded but have not been brave enough to slog through the mine field of self inflicted time wasting to see what is going on. I have really just lost all interest in it. The guy who is going to teach or talk about CW4SE at SEU 2015 is a great guy but has not had hands on cutting time experience with CW4SE as far as I know so what value that session will have is certainly debatable.
Of interest to me is the appearance of Jim Miller Mr Big Deal over SE who has not had time to talk to any users in well over a year now. He will be giving two talks and I have no idea what to expect from an individual who has shown such a disconnect from users to date. Reticent to date and probably will be then to. He has to be there and that does not mean he likes SE or users. Siemens shows it’s contempt for the SE community by foisting such an individual upon us as far as I am concerned.
But in any case if you are a current SE user and anywhere close to Cincinnati I would recommend going. The team from Huntsville is top drawer except for Second Floor Cubical Guy and you will profit by interacting with them. It is the cheapest event of it’s type in the CAD world. Autodesk’s by comparison is at least three times the price if I remember right.
So in a nutshell Inventor HSM has a great update, Helical is doing good things with nice prices and SEU 2015 is around the corner but walk by the CW4SE stuff. Have a great weekend all.
Machined Audio Horn Lens 