Category Archives: machinedaudiohornlens.com

Machined tweeters and mid range horns for audio complete speakers. Klipsch drop in OEM replacements for tweeters

Machined Horn Lens Replaces Klipsch K-77 Tweeter

Posted on May 21, 2018 | 3 comments

For the last few years I have had a hobby that consumes a lot of my time. Audio and it all started back in 1981 when I had a guy invite me over to hear his stereo. So I walk into his living room and there were two big black box things in the corners and two more diagonally out in a straight line towards a coffee table with a chair and a receiver. That was all he had in there. He fired them up and played “Toccata in D Minor” and Mellancamp’s “Crumbling down”. I had just been introduced to the world of high fidelity and the big black boxes were Klipsch Cornerhorns and Klipsch La Scalas. It can still run chills up and down my spine remembering what that sounded like.

Fast forward many years to about 2014 when I decided it was time to get some speakers and lo and behold there next to a job I had in Orlando were two pairs of La Scalas for sale. Since that time I have become quite serious about buying and selling Klipsch vintage speakers because I like listening to the various types and I liked fixing them up. One thing was certain and that was I could listen and resell what I bought if I did not like it and get my money back out of it. I have since gone through a number of Cornwall’s, Fortes, Chorus, La Scala and various Klipsch Professional line speakers. For my personal use I have migrated to a set of Klipsch MCM 1900 three way’s and a pair of Klipsch KP456’s.

The problem with a hobby like this though is that buying speakers close enough and cheap enough to restore and sell for a reasonable profit is getting really tough. It typically involves trips of hundreds of miles to buy and problems to fix when you get them home. It has been a struggle to do this and I have quit looking for vintage Klipsch. I do get some offers I don’t refuse but by and large I don’t seek them anymore. I look for Klipsch Pro speakers which all things considered yield FAR more audio satisfaction for the money spent even if they are not as pretty. Where it matters with the sound they produce they are the best.

One of the audio things I had been kicking around was how to make a hobby productive and maybe even help pay bills when I pretend to retire. I decided to have a try at designing and machining a drop in horn replacement for the Klipsch K-77 tweeter used in many of their offerings. As time passes and I come up with something I cut one and use an APT50 driver and an elliptical horn lens and install them in a pair of Pro La Scalas. The difference was huge and all the shrill went away. Thus began my serious effort to design and begin producing.

I ended up with two horn lens types and a modular base plate that would allow for the horn lens to use either the common 1 3/8 18TPI threaded driver or a two bolt driver like the B&C DE110 or DE120. All final tweaking has been done and I will begin selling these the last week of May. Here are some screen captures of the assemblies from Solid Edge which they were designed in. Basic dimensions first and then the two types of horns which are the Elliptical and Tractix style.

Basic dimensions for horn and DE120

I will be acquiring the skills to measure speaker output in the future but for now a very knowledgeable individual has assisted me with some technical info so people know what to expect with these horn lenses and B&C DE120 drivers. You know who you are and THANKS. I would quite frankly be groping in the dark without his technical ability and assistance.

First up are the Polar Spectrograms of the Elliptical horns.

Elliptical Vertical Spectrogam

Elliptical Horizontal Spectrogram

Next up are the Tractix style. Basically what this is is a round to square to rectangular series of transitions a number of horn lens makers are doing now. I imagine specific dimensions are proprietary to various companies but mine were derived in house according to shoehorning these transitions into very limited space. So namely when I was happy off they went for testing.

Tractix Vertical Spectrogram

Tractix Horizontal Spectrogram

Here is the commentary the tester had regarding these.

In the horizontal direction, look at the yellow to yellow-green color for the approximate -6 dB
point (the usual reference that’s used for polar coverage. It looks like its got about 90
degrees coverage down to about 6 kHz, then narrow to about 60 degree in the 4-5 kHz region, then
broadens again to about 120 degrees coverage below 4 kHz.

Looking at the vertical direction coverage polars, you should use the orange-to-yellow
transition, which is about 30 degrees coverage from 10 kHz on up, 60 degrees from 6-10 kHz, and
90 degrees coverage from 2-6 kHz.

There is a bit of a hot spot at 5 kHz which moderates as the polar angle increases. I tried
EQing the peak at 5 kHz (on-axis) down to flat, but all that did was to decrease the 5 kHz SPL
too much at 20 degrees and greater off-angles–so I re-ran the polars with no EQ and the off-axis
plots look better. The only issue is the 5 kHz peak at zero degrees (on-axis). If you move off
axis by a very small amount, that peak in response at 5 kHz disappears.

The tweeter is also quite hot above 12-14 kHz, with rising response. This should NOT be an issue
since no one older than 30 can really hear well above that frequency, and most recordings roll
off those frequencies to keep the anti-aliasing down above 15 kHz (CD tracks) and vinyl actually
sucks above 12 kHz anyway–it can’t reproduce well above 12 kHz if its been played more than a
couple of times (i.e., pulling a rock through plastic wiggly grooves). So in balance, no one’s
going to complain about that fairly gently rising response above 10 kHz.

I failed to say that the overall frequency response is good without EQ–that’s something that you
can advertise. Note that the 5 kHz peak is only audible on-axis for about 10 degrees of
coverage–a very small amount. If the loudspeakers are not pointed directly at the listener,
they’ll probably never hear that peak.

Some observations:

1) Both B&C drivers required about an hour or two of driving at 100 dB on-axis (one meter) for
their frequency response to even out. It wasn’t gradual, but rather sudden, as if the driver
diaphragm suddenly became unstuck at 6 kHz and above. That caused me the most time in re-
measuring once that driver performance transition occurred.

2) The 6 kHz peak response on-axis is also apparent on this tweeter design, so that’s probably a
B&C driver characteristic, not a horn/driver issue.

3) Make sure that you read the average level on the zero degree line as your baseline “color” for
each plot. In this case, that’s roughly the color at the yellow-orange junction, so that would
be your new “zero dB” level, and minus 6 dB from that point would be the transition to the color
green. If that’s true, then this tweeter has about 90 degrees coverage horizontally from 4 kHz
on up to ~16 kHz, and in the vertical direction, the coverage starts at 60 degrees at 20 kHz and
broadens to almost 180 coverage at 5 kHz.

Now a few comments from me.

Regarding testers choice between the two. Now I will say this beforehand. I have put an APT50 in a La Scala with the Elliptrac horn and it made a BIG improvement over the stock K-77. The general consensus is that bringing the horn mouth to the front of the motor board makes a very noticeable difference even when using a driver like the APT50 which is not as good as the B&C DE120. The tester who had the DE120 and an Elliptrac and Tractix style horn lens to test preferred the Tractix style horn lens. I think all variations are better than stock K-77’s at the very least since the mouth is flush or nearly so with the motor board.

At this time I am going to sell these as follows. Look for them on EBay under “Machined Aluminum Horns Klipsch K-77 Drop in Replacement”

The Elliptical lenses by themselves with the DE clamp plate $156.00
Ellipticals with B&C DE120 drivers $267.00
The Tractix horns take longer to machine and there is a price difference.
Tractix lenses by themselves will be $166.00
With B&C DE120 drivers $277.00

I will update these prices within two weeks to include the APT50 driver clamp plate and in addition I am looking into a Beyma driver. Drivers small enough to fit the badly restricted K-77 space are very few but I am going to make an attempt to make adaptors for them and you decide what you want at that time.

For all of you waiting for these the time is ticking down to next week when they will finally be for sale.

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Dump Autodesk Inventor 2018 and get Solid Edge ST10 Half Price Until 3-23-18

Posted on February 21, 2018 | Leave a comment

Yes as that warm fuzzy feeling that embraces you while you reside in that secure happy place Autodesk cocoon begins to go all Artcam on you I have something for you to consider. If you use that dog barker Inventor and you have been feeling the love from the Autodesk Hydra pseudopods surrounding you there is hope.

SE is offering a buy two get one free or discounts on add ons https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/country/en-us/topic/solid-edge-portfolio-promotion/12642. I have never agreed with the idea you have to buy two seats to get this discount and have argued against it for years. If you want one seat to try it out or you are like me and you only need one this is a dumb offer. But if you find you might need two or more it is a good way to find out what SE is all about with PERMANENT SEATS so you have time to learn as you will and not that 30 or 45 day window that always seems to go by before you have done more than load it.

It infuriates me when leadership at software companies treat users/customers like garbage and in truth this is what started this blog some six + years ago. Sadly while SE management has been smothered by the UGS NX PLM World cabal who fear the growth of SE, SE itself is a world beater in MCAD and has small market share only because of people within Siemens and UGS who have sabotaged its growth. They believe that SE represents a threat to their precious NX God and they are right. The merits of SE are considerable and I have been a user since ST1. Certainly compared to Inventor the only reason not to look at SE is because you are too lazy to learn another program. IF you could be bothered to spend some time there you will find fewer clicks, better popup menus, direct editing that makes Inventors look worse than ST3 whereas SE is now on ST10 and they are actually making strides forward each year. Oh and silly of me to forget to mention they want you as a customer and you can rent or buy seats and they are not going up 10 to 15% or more per year.

Don’t let the inertia of what you know already stifle the discovery of something that will allow you to work faster and better with a rational work flow. If you must and desire something that is used far more often in this days world there can be no choice other than Solid Works. I don’t happen to like SW and I looked into it twice. Both time it just was bizarre to me and counter intuitive. SE just made sense and in fairly short time even if I did not know where the commands were I kind of knew where to find them. Now there are tutorials and search tool for these things but many of us only use these as a last resort it seems. Strange but true.

Anyway with the end of Artcam if there is any doubt about where Inventor is heading let me help you. This is the poor guy stuck with putting a happy face on what Autodesk is doing to Artcam customers. Sixth comment down says

Autodesk Have A Screwed Day Greetings

Here is the forum link. https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/artcam-forum/changes-to-autodesk-artcam/td-p/7758469

Now I have to tell you that Autodesk is axing developers and programs. More and more these poor Autodesk employees mention Fusion360 and have you checked it out yet? Can you imagine the internal cringe this poor guy has to even mention Fusion360 in the same breath as Artcam with such a huge difference in what the programs do? This raving subscription only idiot Anagnost is going to kill TONS of programs and demand that you adopt Fusion360 as a replacement even though it can’t be a capable replacement. This is how they will end Inventor and HSM and others. End the program and those pesky perpetual seat holders are also legally eliminated.

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls if you are an Autodesk customer unless you really want to know.

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Autodesk Artcam Killed, Will You Be Next?

Posted on February 19, 2018 | 4 comments

First off I want to thank Blog Nauseam for keeping me updated on Autodesk happenings. I went there Saturday to catch up since it has been a while. When you are no longer a customer of Autodesk you tend to live in your own little secure perpetual license world. It is one where whatever treachery or Anagnost anti-customer stupidity vomiting forth from them has no effect on your life anymore.

Now you were wise enough not to fall for the subs idea weren’t you? Well let us hope so because in ways that can’t be denied anymore Autodesk has shown with Artcam what they think of you. CNC Zone is a group of machining related forums and is an indicator of market use and interest in various software. In a world where hard data is impossible to come by one looks for indicators as to what is going on. There is an Artcam subheading and then an Autodesk one with HSM Inventor Cam and Fusion360 all in one. Today as is pretty typical Artcam has more readers than brand A’s stuff.  http://www.cnczone.com/forums/

Remember well the push by Autodesk to sell more perpetual seats to users before they cut them off. You were advised to buy more to cover future needs if you liked perpetual. Of course it was not long before the ugly side started showing up. Then come the announcements by Anagnost to investor firms that perpetual will be phased out. Then comes the new pricing structure which has by historical industry standards huge price increases  to punish you for being stupid enough to want to control your life by keeping perpetual seats. That thing they just had sold many of you on by the way.

It has been my belief that Autodesk intends to axe a bunch of programs and roll them over into Fusion360 where possible. Now I had presumed this would have been Inventor and HSM and Inventor Cam primarily. With a $285,000,000.00 price tag for the acquisition of Delcam and it’s customer base I figured they would be safe from the Fusion360 have to work online garbage. If you care to remember this is precisely what Autodesk said about Delcam to. We are not going to touch them and they will continue as an autonomous entity except they are now owned by Autodesk. I guess this is why the end or perpetual seats for Delcam happened about a year later than Inventor HSM and Autodesk etal.

Once again Autodesk was proven to be a pack of liars and grasping for ways to turn into the next Adobe. You see this was the important thing. Please institutional investors but not the investors in the products called customers. Funny how that worked out to as tone deaf and blind dear Andrew Anagnost figures he can do what he wants to customers and they won’t be offended and leave but rather will eagerly stand in the cotton fields and ask him how can they give even more to him for less in return.

Today with the advent of the end of Artcam all you subscription suckers better wake up and find the exit. You see since you were stupid, I do use that term deliberately by the way because putting your companies future into insecure hands is, well it is stupid. When subscriptions end they do just that. You do not work any more. Autodesk has stated that 11-1-18 will be the end for Artcam support. You have a subscription for Artcam and trusted Autodesk with your future you are now a part of Autodesks new wave perpetual licensing paradigm. Namely Perpetually Screwed. They sold you on up front savings and what your getting is the perpetual axe.

Delcam has a bunch of minor niche market programs like Dental Cam and Shoe Cam and who knows what else. I bet these have smaller markets by far than Artcam so all you Delcam users of anything other than the biggest Delcam products be prepared for the ram.

Here comes the 11th down quarter for Autodesk followed by the 12th and at some point in time even the idiots fueling the stock market hyper over valuation will wake up and discover this nice Autodesk lady they have been sleeping with is in truth an axe murderer and terminally ill to boot.

People I don’t care WHAT Autodesk product you are using. If you do not have enough sense to get away from them while you can do so in an orderly way you are just plain silly. Autodesk is telling you every way they can they are going to screw over all who stay BY THEIR ACTIONS.

The words that come out of serial liars mouths are not the things you want your future to be dependent upon.

For you CAD guys look into Bricscad for Autocad replacement. For 3D design check out Solid Edge and both of these companies want you as customers by the traditional standards of willing seller willing buyer.

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New Helical Machining Advisor Pro

Posted on January 31, 2018 | Leave a comment

Helical makes the best endmills considering price and what they do for you. Hanita used to be my favorite but Helical displaced them a few years back. Had my Ingersoll rep out here one day, Ingersoll supplies almost all my carbide insert tooling, and I asked him about the Ingersoll carbide end mills. Basically what it boiled down to was stick with Helical. Part of what makes Helical tools worthwhile is the research that has gone into speeds and feeds and their Milling Advisor which I intend to talk about today.

Now named Helical Machining Advisor Pro received today an email today to sign up. Now I have a bone to pick with Helical and have had for some time over their Advisor policy. Before you were forced to go online to down load the catalogue and program to each PC you wanted it on. Ten mills/lathes with a PC on each one you have to download this thing ten times for your programmers to use it. Now besides the absurdity of having to do the same thing ten times you also have to go online ten times and breach your security to do so. Have any of you read any sort of things in the past year regarding online hacking? Yes I thought so and we all know darned good and well Helical has too.

So anyway off to this new wonder site with the only PC I have that is allowed online today to check it out because of this…….

Now I happen to believe in privacy as much as is possible. I use Firefox because of the great privacy/addons there, and Duck Duck Go for my search engine for the same reason. Avoiding Google, Facebook, Twitter and all that junk as much as possible because of the data mining and it is impossible to stop it. Linkedin is my perfect example of this. They got into my email list one time WITHOUT permission and I still am asked to link with people they could not have known about otherwise years later. Linkedin is kept only because of this blog and never sent money so I don’t get the things that used to be free any more.

Well well well loging for the first time I am told I have to install Google Chrome. Long time Firefox user thank you so I proceed on. Can’t do a darned thing and darned sure can’t check out how it is supposed to work offline as promised. Don’t see how you could do this anyway even though they promised it would since there is “nothing to download” to make it work.

My concerns have been expressed to Helical in the past because I want to use their program and can prove I buy their products but I don’t go online with my workstations so I can’t install their program on the workstations that need it. This new evolution of theirs is a quantum leap in the wrong direction and caters to the cloud idiots who apparently don’t mind what is stolen from them online. Wonder if Helical will indemnify you for data breaches because you have to go online for this wonderful thing? Like all companies that force you online as a condition of use the answer is no. The hypocrisy is pretty amazing and you know Helical has lots of proprietary info they never let online because their stuff has value to them. Sadly YOUR stuff does not have value to them and they could care less if you lose it.

I have nothing but utter contempt for companies that have such a cavalier regard for users. Yes I get that it took time and money to make the program. So two things can be done. Helical only sells through vendors. They have customer numbers and can provide proof of purchases quite easily so there is verification method #1 for stand alone downloads to be put on as many PC’s as that company owns for internal use. The next thing is if you are going to be so anal about it then SELL it to me. I would buy a stand alone copy at a reasonable price even though I would have thought being a customer would be enough.

As it stands right now this compounding of their offenses against users really rubs me the wrong way. Went there and had a look and guess that’s as far as it goes this time around. Not doing Chrome or Google and for sure not going online to use a speeds and feeds doodad from a company that cares so little about my concerns. I don’t know what idiot at Helical came up with this grand new paradigm but sure can say that if I can find another vendor who has good cutters and a good S&F program to I will leave.

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Corporate Forever Promises Are Worth The Paper They Are Written On

Posted on January 18, 2018 | Leave a comment

Reading stuff on the Practical Machinist CAD/CAM forums the last few days where Autodesk continues to be brought up by various people. Seems to be running about 5 to 1 regarding Autodesk with loathing in a big lead. Another company I despise is AT&T. Masters of lobbying corrupt government officials so they can get out of promises made like when they bought out Bell South and said they would continue rural broad band roll outs as a condition to buy them. To this day some seven years later I have fiber to the top of the ridge around 10,000 feet away where Bell South ran it and AT&T left it. I am lucky to get 75kbs and AT&T has ordered no new DSL equipment for years so when things break it is harder and harder for techs to even get us service.

So why mention AT&T today? I received an ad from them that was priceless and I will show you a couple of screen captures from it.

We will love you forever—-promise!

I included the intellectual property section so you know all these logos and junk belong to AT&T. I thought it was a nice touch that they would show a stone fool liberal idiot as an incentive to buy into their mess.

What is a promise worth these days with these big outfits? I think of Inventor Pro with Autodesk over the last year. There were a ton of extra programs I could access a while back. Just before my perpetual seat ended on 12-15-17 I went to download all I could and much to my amazement there was about a 75% reduction in aps Inventor Pro now had rights to even though the price was going up 25% by 2019.

I propose a new addition to anything anyone says at any time from Autodesk. I like the way AT&T said it and the intent behind it. “Offers, programming, pricing, terms & conditions subject to change and may be discontinued at any time without notice.” The famous old price creep everyone who has ever had satellite TV has experienced as soon as they can get away with it.

Just like Autodesk who has now had ten declining income quarters in a row now AT&T is losing subscribers left and right because bait and switch is not a viable alternative when other options become available. Neither is subscription only industrial software to industries when other options are available and I look with glee to Autodesks upcoming eleventh down quarter in a row and wait to see how mercenary evil guy Anagnost spins it as a plus THIS time.

My opinion for what it is worth is that AT&T and Autodesk share common values and avarice towards customers. Their promises are worth the paper they are written on only and of value just like the rolls of paper we all buy and use most every day. AT&T has my business because I am forced to go there. Autodesk does not have my business because they had no ability to force me there but they wanted to try doing so. Autodesk has lost my business forever and as soon as I can dump AT&T they will too.

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Bye Autodesk, See Ya Don’t Want To Be Ya

Posted on December 15, 2017 | Leave a comment

I try to treat my customers like I wish to be treated. Sometimes in a one man shop time gets away from you and you have a delivery that drags out. I always stand behind what I do though and any promises made are abided by.

So today is the last day for my life as a paying Autodesk customer. According to that complete idiot Anagnost as he said at the last Autodesk user convention I am not of value. http://www.thecadinsider.com/2017/11/what-are-webastards.html

This week was spent in part downloading everything and as I went to the accounts page I see some changes made in the last few weeks. It used to be that Inventor Pro HSM Ultimate had a big list of things you could access and were a part of the overall package. Three out of four of them are now gone. Not that I ever used any of them but I think it is quite indicative of the perpetual seat elimination process Autodesk is embarking on. No doubt all these things and more will be added to subscription only packages now as incentive for people who are masters of their destiny and financial independents known as perpetual seat holders are shown the error of their ways.

Subscribers beware as what is happening to us now will be your fate too. In time, not a very long time I figure, Autodesk will start nickle and dimming to death their subscribers. What was there with features and add ons to get most of you on board will change and become extras to be added for a nominal fee to your ever shrinking base package of apps. Autodesk has proven themselves to be duplicitous in deed and nature so nothing that is promised today will bind them tomorrow. Like our perpetual seats there forever! Until they phase the programs out and stick a new name on the subs only replacement and cut you off at the knees. A perfect example is Cimco Edit for HSM. Cimco will license their product to any software company for $100,000.00 and that covers unlimited use as far as I can find out. Apparently that was to much money for Autodesk to spend to keep this valuable, to customers that is, part of the equation. You can however spend extra to get this same thing again and funny how that works isn’t it? To expensive for them but apparently not for YOU. R&D is pretty expensive too and that is being cut back also. You really didn’t need those bugs fixed or new features anyway did you?

Celebrate with me as I say good-bye to a once great company that has been suborned by evil slave-owning mentality hucksters who will say anything and promise anything and under the new paradigm guarantee only one thing for real. Your complete financial enslavement to a system that will be set up to bleed you. You are now not a customer that Autodesk has to satisfy once you go subs you are chattel property where your opinion does not matter and pay up and shut up. Then pay more and shut up. Then pay us before anything else and shut up about it if you want to keep working. Ain’t life grand when you have such a wonderful mutually beneficial working relationship with your software authoring company?

As of midnight tonight my decision to remain free and in control means you Mr Baked Beans can go get screwed and do so with none of my money ever again.

For those of you looking for powerful CAD or MCAD software while fleeing the Autodesk plantation may I recommend Solid Edge to you? I don’t honestly know how good Cam Express is but Siemens is offering a deal right now where you get CAD and CAM bundled together. I can without reservation wholly recommend Solid Edge and even when I was an Inventor customer all my design work was done in SE and imported into Inventor. Once you learn and use SE Inventor is just to painful to contemplate ever using except as a parts placer for HSM. Oh and permanent seats too for those who don’t believe in slavery or drinking millennial subs never own anything but spend more kool-aide

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Autodesk, This Is A Reminder I Am Leaving On 12-15-17

Posted on November 27, 2017 | 5 comments

Got this email a week or two ago. Slightly edited to protect a good VAR who is also in the process of getting screwed by Autodesk. At least Autodesk is an equal opportunity screwer and if you are not inside certain C suites you are fair game.

Autodesk
Dear Dave Ault,
This is a reminder that your maintenance plan on Contract # 110000000000 will expire on December 15, 2017. Your renewal number is A-5000000.
You now have the option to renew your contract for one year or switch to a subscription*. If you choose to switch to subscription (only available at the time of renewal), you can start to enjoy these subscriber benefits:

* Latest and greatest product capabilities – Get ongoing updates to products and services and new functionality, as soon as they’re available.
* New and improved support – Enjoy faster response times and the option to receive help by scheduling a call with Autodesk technical support specialists.
* Simplified administration – Access tools that streamline deployment and software management when you standardize all of your Autodesk products on subscription.

Your reseller, (Insert name of VAR also getting screwed here).
For more information, go to Autodesk Account.
*Not all products on a maintenance plan are eligible to switch to subscription. Consult with your reseller for complete details.

As you can imagine I thought about writing a notice for them.

Dear Autodesk and Andrew Anagnost,
This is a reminder that this customer on maintenance customer on contract #11000000000 will not be sending you any more money after December 15, 2017.
Your contract dismissal letter number is A-5000000. You have no options available to renew this contract except to end subscriptions only.
If you choose to end subscriptions and huge yearly price hikes you will enjoy these benefits:

I will pay you this year.
I will pay you next year.
I will pay you the year after that too.

*All products on a maintenance plan are required to be continued and supported yearly. Contact your customer for pro-rated income to you if they are not.

There is no doubt in any rational persons mind that PR and Marketing people have an absurdly tenuous grasp on reality as it concerns their customers or target markets. How do you like that list of benefits as extolled in words that no customer could POSSIBLY resist! I told my wife to hide the check book before I succumbed to the siren song of Marketing and PR droids sweetly singing in my ear and sent another years fees off. This list of benefits is about as worthy of consideration as a CNN book on “The Honesty of Bill and Hillary Clinton”. Or perhaps Hillary’s new forthcoming book on “Stopping The Culture of Sexual Harassment In Government”. Or Al Franken’s soon to be released “How To Be Admired By Wimminck!” Or Huma Abedin’s book on “Care And Cleaning of (S)hag Carpets”.

Have a MAGA GREAT Thanksgiving everyone and remember the things that made this the greatest nation the world has ever seen in such a short period of time. Teach your children the truth about America before liberal idiots get to them and pass this legacy of freedom and prosperity on to the future.

Written before Thanksgiving obviously but I decided to post as is with this notation because the sentence before this one is useful year round. Talk to your children and grandchildren to prepare them for the liberal liars that will accost them at every turn.

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Autodesk Inventor Ultimate 2018 CPA MBA Marketing Insanity

Posted on November 9, 2017 | Leave a comment

Before I begin the bashing I do have some good things to say today about the HSM side of Ultimate. It looks like the assigning of Jeff Peck over the HSM group is bearing fruit. The latest developmental downloads have seen the pace of improvement pick up and so finally HSM is moving forward again. Almost I could be persuaded to give Autodesk another years worth of $$$ but I draw the line at fiscal coercion which is their preferred future modus operandi IF they can get away with it. Going on ten quarters of declining profits now even though the stock market which has little bearing on true dividend earnings for shareholders any more seems to like them so far. I have met some really good people with HSM and it is the plantation overseers I object to. They are the whole problem and it is a big one for rational cost containing consumers.

Yep CPA’s and MBA’s will in time go down as the group of management responsible for the moving of industry to China, the complete lack of loyalty to anything other than manipulating stock values for their own personal benefits and the gross increase in upper level income and perks relative to historical norms. This is the mindset that will make lots of millionaires in the C suites while at the same time they are removing the ability of their customers to afford much of the offerings because their high paying jobs have been eliminated by offshoring. It is why cars and trucks are now up to huge costs and long notes.

“According to new data from Experian Automotive, the average new and used-car loan terms are now at record highs of 67 and 62 months, respectively. What’s more, roughly 30% of new car loans being written today are for loan terms of between 73 and 84 months — a 19% increase over the first quarter of last year and the highest percentage recorded since Experian began publishing this figure in 2006.” http://tinyurl.com/ycwbjbb7

Here is a comment on executive pay by historical norms from 2014. http://tinyurl.com/k8v9q3h
“From 1978 to 2013, CEO compensation, inflation-adjusted, increased 937 percent, a rise more than double stock market growth and substantially greater than the painfully slow 10.2 percent growth in a typical worker’s compensation over the same period.
The CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 20-to-1 in 1965 and 29.9-to-1 in 1978, grew to 122.6-to-1 in 1995, peaked at 383.4-to-1 in 2000, and was 295.9-to-1 in 2013, far higher than it was in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s.” When coincidently hourly wages bought far more and economic growth was as an average greater than the last fifteen CPA MBA run years. In 1967 I made $1.65 an hour at McDonalds. It bought FIVE gallons of gas though and all things being equal I would have to make $12.25 after taxes today to do the same. My first new car was a $2,700 1974 Hornet Hatchback and I paid that off in six months with my $9 something per hour Chrysler assembly line worker wage. I don’t think you could even get a three year long loan for vehicles back then.

This brings us full circle to the current thief now in charge of Autodesk. Another C suite dude who thinks a company’s sole reason for existence is stock manipulation for personal wealth creation. I would love to see what he thinks he is worth and the golden parachute in place so even if (when) he fails he gets to steal even on his way out. Gone is the forward-looking planning and today it is how can we lie today for gains today driven by increase in the value of stocks today. Never a word about shareholder income in dividends which made this country great and provided secure retirements for many. Today it is a house of cards here and if you can ride it up well and good. You stay there to long and you are toast. In the past, up until I figure about 2000, if stocks declined precipitously you were covered by the dividend income you bought the stock for. Capital gains was the icing on the cake and not the cake. Anyway.

I go to the Autodesk forum today. http://tinyurl.com/yakf6zs6 It is just to amusing for words but I will try anyway. Remember cost containment is for the anointed but not for the unwashed masses.

“Hi all –

We’ve been watching the feedback regarding the elimination of the backplotting capabilities in the version of the CIMCO Editor that ships with Inventor HSM and HSMWorks. It’s clear that this is a capability that many of you are genuinely missing. We’d like to give you a little background on what happened here, and what we’re planning to do about it.

For the past few years, we have had a technology sharing agreement in place where we could redistribute the Professional version of the editor, in exchange for access to the HSM CAM kernel. This agreement expired at the end of last year, so we had to renegotiate the arrangement.

The arrangement we reached, at considerable increased cost to Autodesk, was to redistribute only the Standard version of the editor, with a corresponding reseller agreement, where we can provide access to the Pro-level features at an extra cost.

We are considering an amendment to the agreement with CIMCO that would allow us to include the Professional version with certain levels of the Autodesk HSM product. This is still under discussion, and we have no firm plans to do this.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and truly regret that we weren’t able to provide advance notice of the change.

We’ll keep you posted about what, if any, adjustments we are able to make in this area. As has been noted in various forum posts, those of you with access to prior releases are still able to use the older version of the editor, with backplot capabilities.

Thank you very much for your feedback concerning how much you value the backplot feature.”

Now let me get this right. Mr Anagnost it is not OK for people to tell you what you should pay for a product but it is OK for you to do so to your customers. OK got it. Controlling your expenditures is prudent fiscal management but increasing your costs to your customers is a value added benefit you bequeath to them. Check. Gotta love the psychobabble garbage these people put on things to try to make extortion more palatable for the rubes.

My answer to you Mr Anagnost is go get screwed. This customer at least is willing to continue to do business with you on the terms that brought me here but understand I am not your cotton picker. The very second you tried to make this a coercive relationship is when you lost me and many others. I hope you fail and they strip you of your ill-gotten gains and the exit door puts a big welt on your butt on your way out. I watched one of your kind destroy the O’Charleys restaurant chain which was at one time the livelihood of about 14,000 people. By the time the MBA moron Greg Burns got done with it went from 600 plus stores to 200 some and had to be sold off to an investment company because it was failing. He too was grossly over compensated way above worth while he was there and got a nice severance package as he arranged the buyout of the chain HE had caused to fail.

I will never forget when one of Burn’s big shots started removing quality ingredients from food so as to save money and so he could get bigger personal bonuses each year for cost containment. A friend of mine was pretty silly and when asked his opinion on the latest Honey Mustard Dressing with a drop of honey and a ton of corn syrup compared to the old with lots of honey in it what he thought of it. He was told by the Vice President in charge of food quality for the whole restaurant chain that his negative opinion did not matter. That “people were stupid and we are going to educate them as to what they are going to like”. I kid you not and this was the beginning of the end for the old O’Charleys.

People do know what they like though and I in particular do not like the terms Autodesk now offers. Crash and burn Anagnost and the sooner the better. Your two faced self serving hypocrisy is here for all to see.

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You Own Solid Edge And Don’t Use Synchronous???

Posted on October 18, 2017 | 2 comments

Just some random comments today derived from the Huntsville SEU I attended on 10-17-17.

One of the things I have pondered for years is why the user community for SE is so small. One of the larger CAD bloggers and I have discussed this and he say’s that SE’s market share is far smaller than they want to admit to. Who knows since getting a straight answer on many things from a software company is an exercise in futility and if you do get a real answer often you are forbidden to talk about it.

As I was leaving yesterday I thought about this and for the first time I think I have a partial answer to tiny community size. I like many SE customers came here on a search for capable software. Unlike SW where there was a huge community of advocates willing to sway you SE had to draw the attention of serious lookers purely by capabilities. Yes SW is of course capable. But for me when I was shopping I went to two SW events here in Nashville to kick their tires. Both times it just seemed clunky and counter intuitive to me and the sales team was offensive. Big room full of people both times though. I ran across SE while searching for best in class sheet metal and kept running across comments about SE. They would say things like not well-known or not as popular as SW but had a great sheet metal reputation.

So in spite of all the cajoling to adopt the market share leader and adopt the program with the most employment possibilities I was looking for what would best benefit this one man basically closed ecosystem shop. What would work the best and the easiest for what I did was my question. This is a common thread with many SE users. We investigated and made software choices independently and not from outside influence’s like peer pressure and aggressive sales shmucks. We came here not because of community but because of capabilities and therefore community was not important.

UGS and Siemens have not helped in this area much and the proof this worked for SW did not mean anything to them since they did not care much what SE did as long as it never threatened to many NX sales. Therefore no community for SE to speak of today because it has to start with an aggressive corporate plan that is adhered to for the requisite number of sustained multiple years of effort and effective planning and promotion. Never has happened although a serious attempt at this was made under Karsten Newbury and Don Cooper and subsequently shot down by the UGS cabal.

Out of 32 attendees in Huntsville I asked the question once again of how many were using Synchronous Tech. Only seven held up their hands. To me this is just mind-boggling and the single greatest differentiator between SE and the other major MCAD programs IS ST. I did not bother to ask why because I have heard this before and the answers basically boiled down to we did not have time to learn to use it. Did not have time to learn once something that would save you time from then on is how I see it but what do I know? To me the very first time I saw Synchronous in use it was like a whole new world of freedom opened up right before my eyes. I hated the shackles of traditional history based modeling and ST was like hey, I can throw away the ball and chain now and start walking without dragging this huge weight behind me. I had no idea this capability existed but when I saw it I knew it was for me.

When I first started in with CNC milling I found out quickly you needed a CAM program. You then needed a way to feed the CAM program. The choice was working off of 2D like many were doing around here or embrace the future right away with a 3D modeller and a CAM program working off of surfaces or edges. To me it was a no brainer and I went straight into 3D modeling and never did anything like Autocad. I regard the power of ST that resides inside of SE to be just as fundamentally empowering as that choice for 3D for CAM was. I for the life of me can’t grasp why anyone would not adopt ST for at least a significant portion of their work. This is a failure of SE and UGS and Siemens to clearly demonstrate and educate users to the power of ST to existing customers which then in turn become ST advocates and create new customers for SE, UGS and Siemens.

I guess that my curiosity level is far higher than the average employed user. They do not want to be bothered adding yet another bit of work to the mix that they will not get paid extra for I suppose and so they stay with the familiar and don’t learn the new. I can kind of understand this mindset since production still has to be met and learning new things can initially be quite time-consuming. Owner’s or employers see work is still done according to traditional expected levels of productivity never understanding how much better it could be. Siemens UGS etal have not bothered to demonstrate this in any compelling way so they might become interested and so the single most powerful productivity tool remains in the bottom of the tool box where it never sees the light of day. Here we are some four years after I first asked this question of a group of users and nothing has changed.

Anyway have a good one everybody.

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Solid Edge Huntsville 2017 “Community College”

Posted on October 18, 2017 | 2 comments

Yesterday was the SE “University” event in Huntsville. Basically an 8 hour long way to brief and superficial imitation of the real deal which may have ended for good last year. I am not sure what is being attempted here and with the new Mr Big in charge of SE the anonymizer is back in place. I can’t even remember this dudes name and really don’t want to bother looking it up again. Suffice it to say that he has been assigned to squelch publicity and enthusiasm for SE so NX can garner more sales. In any case these little local events are not much and this is sadly by design I fear. I really miss Karsten who was active in the user community and cared what happened. This new dude no one sees or hears from and quite frankly I imagine SE employees wonder just what he does since nothing is done by him I can see except putting the annonymizer thing on SE. Maybe we should start a sort of internet game where you try to find things and see if we can figure out where he is and what he does for his salary. I have talked pretty badly about SE’s UGS and Siemens overlords in the past and still hold them in contempt. SE however is a superior product.

Saratech was the sponsoring VAR and as has been my experience with them in the past they do a good job. Of course they are there to sell themselves too but they are not offensive about it. I don’t know what if any help Siemens provided for this event although I am certain SE did since it was held in an adjacent building to the SE headquarters in the same complex. Sadly missing this year were any of the actual developers and focused in depth topics. There were no feedback sessions either since there was no SE employee presence there to collect it like was traditional with the real SEU’s. Thanks Saratech for helping this event out.

32 in attendance.

Any major design program has gobs of things most users will never use. The primary focus this year seemed to be on reverse engineering. I have not actually played with it yet but there looks to be some fairly significant strides forward in dealing with point cloud data and of even more interest to me STL files. I had a Gold Faroarm some years back and the idea of reverse engineering has always appealed to me. Dealing with collected data is not a straight forward issue and any help in this area is a good thing. No I have no hands on experience with this new aspect of SE nor do I expect to but if your shop does deal with this check out perpetual seat SE (yep I had to say it since Autodesk wont offer you this) and see what it will do. You need to find the right individual to help you though since scan data presents all kinds of modeling problems. The guy who talked about this from Saratech was pretty good so they do have at least one real user on staff to help you.

Sheet metal as always has been one of SE’s primary standout capabilities and this has continued to be developed. Better Synchronous implementation in ST10 and the ability to create parts in place in assemblies is improved this year. Sheet metal is one of the things that drew me to SE in 2009 from VX now ZW3D and I have never regretted the move. There have been times where I have felt the pace of improvement was not sufficient to justify the yearly fees but after a few years with Autodesk I know it can be far worse elsewhere.

Can you tell Autodesk is someone I would not recommend dealing with? Here is another reason why. Support for Autodesk products is primarily we will help you install and get it running. After that they have their hand(s) out for more money to answer actual software questions. I ran into a familiar face from GTAC which is the corporate user support group inside of SE in Huntsville yesterday. It reminded me once again of how generous the support options are for SE users compared to, well, lets say Autodesk for instance. I can also say that support from my VAR over the years has been entirely sufficient in all ways except for CAMWorks for SE which I quickly abandoned and never intend to use again.

SE is by far the single best MCAD program out there as far as I am concerned. Having dealt with Autodesk Inventor for three years was a real personal hands on eye opener to the advantages of SE over other popular MCAD programs like Inventor. I have been an advocate of Synchronous Tech since ST1 and since ST3 can say it was for prime time use. Inventor was SO bad and their idea of direct editing so bereft of intelligence that after spending some time trying to learn it I just quit. It was clear there was nothing there for an SE user and so Inventor was relegated to being a parts placer so I could use HSM.

I don’t write a whole lot about SE anymore and I have not made a video in some time. I take for granted the capabilities of SE and to me they are just there and tools I have used for so long I forget how powerful it is compared to the other stuff.

May I take a second here to tell you that if you have not investigated SE for MCAD you should do so? Especially if you are an Autodesk Inventor customer I can tell you life is better here by far and SE does not intend to turn you into an on demand endless ATM like Autodesk wants you to be. Lets see here. Better software, perpetual or rental options YOU choose and real actual support for what they sell you. If you are an existing Autodesk Inventor user you better be getting your life raft in order because Inventor is I figure going to be phased out and replaced with Fusion360. Ending Inventor is the only legal way Autodesk can end perpetual Inventor seats and I figure this is their intent. Both Bass and Anangnost have stated in shareholder meetings they are going to subscription only and this is the only way they can do that. Solid Edge wants you as a customer and offers real value and continuing improvements as compared to Autodesk who wants you purely as a cotton picker and chattel for THEIR benefit.

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