Tag Archives: manufacturing

Yes Gertrude, PLM World has a Dress Code

Posted on July 13, 2012 | 12 comments

Posted today at the Siemens SE Misc category on the BBS Forum.

“I just got an email through regarding the PLM Connection event next week in the UK. I was pretty shocked to see a dress code stipulated – see the image below!! The day a company starts to tell their CUSTOMERS how to dress shows a severe disconnect from reality. Do Siemens really think this sort of pomposity will endear them to potential clients (let alone existing ones)?

Now I know why Steve Jobs never made it to PLM World; his black crew neck just didn’t cut it with the organizers.   Roger”

As they say seeing is believing. https://bbs.industrysoftware.automation.siemens.com/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=5687

This is a priceless example of PLM World. When a PLM World guy showed up  at a meeting we had after SEU2012 to discuss user groups he was the only one in a suit and tie. Tony Affuso and Karsten and ALL the other UGS/SE/Siemens people I can remember seeing during the event were dressed casually with corporate polo shirts replete with SE logos. I talked with this individual after the meeting and asked him if he had noticed that none of the SE attendees wore formal clothing. He grinned and said yes he had noticed that but never had a clue why I asked. The big shots with Siemens knew their SE users which was evidently something not of importance to the PLM guy

The more I hear about PLM World the further any good opinion I may have of them in any area falls fast. I think they have turned out to be a bunch of self-interested fiefdom building individuals who have become way to fascinated with form over function and have forgotten the reason they purportedly exist is to promote the user community. That PLM guy was not there to build bridges with SE users he was there because they are not happy that SE is holding an event beyond their control and that they can’t profit from. I believe he would rather have seen 37 SE users under PLM Worlds control than to see 500 SE users at their own event out of PLM Worlds control

Devon Sowell was one of the principle SW bloggers out there until about a year ago. At that time he just dropped off the face of the SW blogosphere and no one quite knew why. Turns out that he went to a meeting with some of the SW corporate type individuals and he was sniffed at for his dress standards. Basically he was lacking the “proper” minimum level of approval clothing. So these clueless idiots take a prominent SW blogger who has done a lot towards supporting their community and selling their products and totally alienate him with their stupidity. He was already unhappy with the way the software was going and this was the final straw. Here is a link to his comment, the first response to Matt’s post. http://www.dezignstuff.com/blog/?p=7048

This post should be read by PLM World as it is a bit of reality for those who have lost touch with their “customers”

I do not understand why PLM World seems to have this death grip on UGS and the user community. They are supposedly a separate entity from UGS Siemens SE but it seems at times they are not and get away with bad behavior that would not be normally tolerated by an independent contractor.

Consider the following. I have had contact from NX RUGS who have chaired local groups who are totally fed up with PLM World and the solution from PLM World seems to be to marginalize these whiners instead of listening to unpaid volunteers real complaints. Then we have SE which was put into this groups cold clammy hands in 2006 and by 2009 attendance was down from around 500 or so SE users at their own 2005 event in Cincinnati to I believe 37 at PLM World 2009 Nashville. The very first year we have an individual event back for SE users attendance was 250 and the second was double that. Within three years it is my prediction that we will have more than PLM World will have. This is because the SE event is being held and directed by individuals that have a true interest in community and listen to what users want. You know who you are and my heartfelt thanks go out to this small group.

PLM World is part of the legacy, the bad side of the legacy, that has followed UGS into the world of Siemens. It did not have to be this way but I gotta tell you that the very first words out of the PLM World reps mouth at our meeting about lack of SE attendance was they would have to form a committee and study the problem. Really.  He actually said that and does that not exemplify how totally narcissistic and moribund that bunch of losers has become?  If you are from PLM World and you read this please excuse my use of the fictional slang word “gotta”.  I know I let you down with improper syntax and I promise to try to do better.

The best thing that I think could happen to promote the active growth of any Siemens software product user community would be for either the complete externally forced rejuvenation of the PLM World philosophy or just get rid of it and start over.

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Surfcam Velocity 6 at the Barber Vintage Sports Museum.

Posted on June 28, 2012 | 4 comments

Went to see Surfcam V6 at the Barber Sports Museum yesterday. For those of you interested it should be available to subscribers as a download this Friday.

As an aside here it was amusing to talk to Karsten Newbury at SEU12 about CAM programs.  They were a bit shocked at how many are out there when they started seriously looking for an integration partner and how they are all different. I knew exactly what he meant and this is why it is taking me so long to pick a CAM program. I only want to do this one more time for my main CAM program and I am in no hurry to make a choice I will regret. The CAM market appears to be in a state of flux right now just as CAD is with the Kings getting ready to be knocked off because they have forgotten the idea that the customer comes first. Meaning of course Mastercam and SolidWorks who are going to find out that you can’t take customers for granted.

I do have some negative things to say about Surfcam but on the whole I was genuinely favorably impressed with the program and the new life being breathed into this recently nearly stagnant company and I thought you should read this before going on. Now on to what I saw and my impressions in this short hands off exposure to V6.

Yes undo is still not there and when I asked about it I got a sad answer, as the guy who is telling me this has his eyes rolling back in his head. The excuse proffered is there are to many legacy problems to solve to do this. Yes it appears all the actual users and support people hate this but—no change. Yes he admitted every one else does this but Surfcam. Now he did say that they have some kind of formula for determining what gets fixed and it is based upon the number of complaints. Perhaps it is time to flood them with complaints on this both in Public and in private direct with the company. I am looking at probably renewing my old seat here and no undo is a big problem for me.

So I am telling Surfcam publically that this is a big deal for this user and not smart business to say no change is coming here because we don’t feel like dealing with our legacy stuff. Maybe your customers don’t complain about this anymore because they have given up hope and this is not a good place for you as a company to be. This undo lack has been true for at least the last ten years that I know of.

There will be no feature recognition so you will still have to pick and sort hole sizes by look for size and how this will work for tapped, and not tapped and holes with treatments I don’t know. Surface selection is nothing even close to the beauty of FR I see elsewhere.  Certainly it is bad when compared with Camworks and Featurecam and HSMWorks  which are three others I have looked at recently. What is automated in other programs you will have to do yourself here but the flip side is I think perhaps better strategy for fine tuning a  particular cut path if you are into serious production runs or a really large complex mold. On the whole though I prefer to have the Feature Recognition capabilities I have seen in other programs which would represent a genuine time saving and efficiency in my shop for the parts I do.

They did not talk about Lathe at all and no one asked either. I assume this means that Surfcam continues perhaps ten years or so of basically nothing new for lathe users. As of yet I have not had a cnc lathe so this is what I have been told by others who are familliar with this part of the program. I am also assuming that users have given up on this as with 50+ people there you know darned well some lathes are in use but no one asked anything about lathe.

I like the tool paths and I have always felt that the tool library and prompts for tool path strategies were the best I had ever used. This stays pretty much the same and that is good. There are some nice looking toolpaths in there although some like the new 3-axis radial I can’t see much use for. 4 and 5 axis has always been a strength in Surfcam I have been told by others. I have not used these but what I saw in the demo appeared to back these claims up. Posts with Surfcam have been bullet proof in my experience and still look to be so.

Verify looked pretty good but what really looked good was the amount of time it took to regen tool paths on some fairly complex parts. The Surfcam I remember took forever to do this sometimes and watching the demo guy confidently redo tool paths with full confidence he could do this in a limited time frame was nice to see. 64 bit which is new to Surfcam in this version has made a difference.

One of the strange things there was when users were asked about Truemill and how many were using it. Very few hands went up and I don’t get this. SpaceClaim was also there and they showed a few very basic direct edits and I am listening to some of these guys ooh and ahh over this and wondering what rock they live under to A, have Truemill and not be interested enough to try it and B, what world are they living in that they have never seen a direct edit move done before. Kind of weird.

The broken link for Faroarms is fixed finally but will only work for USB style arms. I had kept my old seat of Surfcam just for the Faro interface and was not aware that this had been screwed up through V4 and V5. There is a serial port to usb port converter out there you can plug into though so I think this is not a problem if you own a Gold Faroarm like I do for instance. I watched the Faroarm guy collect points and make surfaces with the piss poor cad inside of Surfcam so even though cad is terrible ( Doing this with collected points on a grid and each point had to be dealt with one by one. You can however work with a surprisingly large variety of parts this way)  you can do very good things with a Faroarm and it beats the heck out of spending the $10,000.00 plus for Faro’s outrageously priced software. I will most likely be renewing my old seat of 2.5 axis solely for this if nothing else.

What may be more important is just like SolidEdge has done in the past few years with a change in management philosophy Surfcam too may now have a couple of individuals outside the Deihl family who are wholeheartedly committed to making the right changes and are working on doing so. They are hiring more developers and intend to work on stuff. Which stuff was not defined to me however.

Basically I left feeling that for the first time in years Surfcam was becoming worthy of another evaluation. I don’t like some of the lacks mentioned above but they have gotten my attention.

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ZW3D 2012 Nearly History, Viva Solid Edge

Posted on May 28, 2012 | 6 comments

Before I get into the primary aspect of this post a few comments. I have regarded the Synchronous Tech in Solid Edge as revolutionary and was a fan of it from the first time I saw it in action with one of my imported parts from VX. It was like a light went on and I could see power I wanted and the potential there and immediately became a customer for Solid Edge.

It was not until ST3 that SE matured into what I had envisioned. I can only say that every day I use it I am reminded of justifications for the validity of my choice for the work flow in my company. ST5 is right around the corner and I expect to have a number of great things to talk about and power being put into users hands. I am excited to be here.

Over at http://ontheedge.dezignstuff.com/ there are a number of discussions going on regarding SE and SW and the differences in both programs and in some ways the philosophy of the respective parents of both. On one hand we have a company with a plan for the future and a robust geometry kernal designed in part for best in class direct editing. On the other we have a chaotic corporate program mashup based it seems on a mythical user base per Bernards imagination.  Serious problems abound as they try to pick some sort of viable corporate direction. Dassault knows they have lost the direct editing battle because they aren’t being sold the technology that makes ST possible.  So off to the races they go with their own kernal that evidently is not so hot while they try to do it to.

You Solid Works users are in for really rough times for years to come. In conjunction with the switch to the new geometry kernal you will have the joy of translation problems. Direct editing will take years to sort out assuming it can even be made to work as well on their kernal as ST does on parasolids. Add in new program issues to as they move from SW to the Catia Lite GUI.  Or you can elect to stay with poorly supported SW traditional with few improvements that you will still have to pay for until they just cancel it.

If I may be so bold here I think I have a term Dassault could use for the combination of cloud, new kernal problems and some sort of direct editing in combination with exciting socially immersive  3D engineering experiences  and crowd sourcing goodness. They could call it Le Stink!R0nerous Technique 😉

On to ZW3D.

Over time you grow to trust things that have worked. Tapping is one that falls into that category for me. So I am cutting my very first parts on my new mill. I no longer have my old faithfull VX V14.5 loaded and instead I am using ZW3D 2012. It is a good thing to regen your cam plan in these cases as there may well be differences and the plan in any case needs to be in the version you are using. This had always worked before with S&F in the tool library so I regen and post without thinking I would have to check the auto entered data ahead of time. First two holes sounded labored and on the third the tap shattered. I am thinking here what the heck, first part new mill NOW WHAT! So for your entertainment today I present the new tap library input for S&F for a 1/4 18 NPT. The tool library has always been skimpy here but the data associated with it was correct. User beware, you will have to double check everything and trust nothing with cam and tapping now. The recommended 7/16 drill bit is to small by the way so be carefull on drill sizes to, they can be incorrect.

On a seperate note here. I go to post this on the ZW3D forums today and the following observations on this. Categories. Discuss,share and ask?? How stupid is this and what was wrong with the four categories that worked for so many years on the old forums with goofy titles like Cad and Cam? New and improved? How about new stupid and unworkable with no sorting. You go to upload pictures and you have to guess that the blue patches with no label are relevant. Then when you figure that out you have to figure out where to go on the tabs to paste the pic to the post and no hints to let you know what is going on. WHEN are you guys going to start fixing these things you have been so busy improving? Not at all pleased to see that evidently the forum coders are now doing the tool library too.

This is going to be my next to last post for ZW3D. I am confident that within a couple of months I will have a new CAM program one way or another. My hopes are for integrated something with SE. If this does not happen soon I will sadly move on to selecting the best stand alone CAM program that will suit my needs. But in any case what will be next regarding ZW from this soon to be ex-users viewpoint will be a post mortem commentary.

I really do understand the reluctance of Solid Works users to let go. You get time and money and experience in a product and you hate to let it go. Here I am still fiddling around with ZW3D when deep down inside I know better. Changing is a major inconvenience in time both in legacy files and in learning new things and money you have to now spend and have spent. Trashing this part on my brand new mill was it for me. OK SW users, your time is coming to and what will it be for you?

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Solid Edge Needs a User Community to Thrive

Posted on May 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

Over at Matt’s Solidedge blog, http://ontheedge.dezignstuff.com/community/247   you can find the topic of user community today. This is a topic near and dear to my heart and a source of continuous frustration. To me I regard the SW user community in both the social aspects and the integrated apps aspects with real envy.

It is  a lynch pin of  SW success for both the users and the company that creates it. I could say that it is one of the chief indicators as to whether or not a software company regards it’s users seriously. I was going to say the chief indicator until I thought of SW where Dassault’s destruction of the software against user wishes may very well outweigh the value of community  in the near future.

But I do believe community has been key to long term growth and retention. The user community both in social and in integration is going to be the thing that will sway many to stay in spite of being abused by Dassault with “Catia Lite”. Community is the thing that convinced many to be with SW over the years.

I think that the problem of integrated apps is probably being addressed with SE at this time. How well and how fast and with what and to what degree is a deep dark secret I am not privy to. I can only say that I hope they realize the seriousness of the time limits placed upon them to do this. Once Dassault finishes destroying the SW people knew and loved and gets around to running off their customers  the winner had better have their alternatives in place and proven. I figure about a year is left.  A year has just been squandered. Half the time is gone with nothing to show.

SE has had as far as I know, and in spite of large seat count growth, only one new user group formed since 2005 and it is moribund. I quit trying to have a meeting because it is just to darned hard to get dates from SE. Last year we were supposed to wait for the ST4 Rollout meetings like there were for ST3.  Wait for the dates so they don’t conflict. Then there is 60 days before and after PLM World so they don’t conflict. I never did hear back and I assume there just was no interest. Lets face it, NOTHING will happen with the user community unless it is driven and promoted and sustained from the SE side.

After the ST3 regional Rollout meetings there were 17 groups that should have and could have been started. People who proved their interest by showing up were ripe for the harvest and SE did nothing. The interest was there, the people were there and in retrospect the only thing that was not was desire on the part of SE or Siemens or whoever was responsible to follow through. Really, the majority of the work had been done, people found and then all those seeds die from lack of water.

The Huntsville ST4 Rollout was a tremendous success as far as I am concerned. It took many jaded long time users from the status quo apathy they had been trained to have over the years to enthusiasm for the software again. But then nothing follows. We have ST5 in Nashville this June, and I heartily recommend you go if you can, but what comes after? A trek to “Mecca” once a year is not enough. It is just a begining and a springboard to launch into a planned multipronged sustained effort to build a community.

Community by the way is not Local Motors nor is it Colleges or Universities. These entities are ancillaries to but not the drivers of community success. Community is built with professional users and a suite of applications used by them. Community is where like minded people with a common connection gather to assist each other in work, software, jobs and contracts. It is where after hours you can take your laptop or do a webex with another user and solve your problem. It is where the practical experience of day to day users will save your bacon time and time again. You know what, without an active professional user community to point to all a software company has to bring to the table is, if I may play on words here, just academic and pretty meaningless in the real world. The one where the rubber hits the road and companies earn their yearly sub fees from. No one is enthused about learning software if they think there will be no work as a result. There are a lot of professional SE users out there but try and find one. How and where do you go? And just how did this sorry state of affairs not only start but now continues?

I watch what is going on and wonder how the legacy of the dumb things SE used to do under Integraph and UGS can still be here. I know Siemens wants it to be different but I just wonder how many little fiefdoms of preservation of past poor results will have to be dismantled before SE will take it’s rightfull place under the sun. I just grasp at straws here for the reason this goes on. I honestly can’t for the life of me figure this out and the single biggest ally Dassault’s Catia Lite has, I am sorry to say, is the publicity and community planning department of SE.

I like an anecdote attributed to Lee Iaccoca years ago. He was talking to a counterpart at GM and bemoaning the fact Chrysler was getting such lousy ads. He asked how GM had turned things around. The answer? The people who were responsible were told that either they produced or they were fired. I think that whoever or whatever is the reason for the holdup at SE needs to shape up or ship out. There is no more time to fiddle around. There is now less than a year to succeed from when I started this post and the clock keeps ticking.

Stop having meetings to plan what and how to do it and start doing things or you can have crash analysis meetings in the near future to dissect what went wrong. If SE does not want new customers I am sure someone else will be willing to pick up the slack.

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Out with the OLD and In with the NEW

Posted on May 8, 2012 | 4 comments

I know, you sit there in a factory with dozens of cnc machines and it is no big deal. For this guy however the arrival today of my new Haas VF4 is a big deal.

I have been waiting for some time watching the improvements over the years and debating the wisdom of doing this. My old Haas VF3 from 1993 has been a real trooper and indeed was a fine machine to start a small cnc milling operation. It is still a fine machine and will now serve a new owner well to I am sure.

As I have mentioned before I regard Haas as American manufacturing genius at it’s best. Good value and quality and super support. My old mill had parts available for everything from Motherboards to encoders for the spindle for ridgid tapping. Haas’s philosophy here is that they support what they make and have made and they don’t care how old. What a remarkable and refreshing change from the China crap the MBA and CPA types have inflicted upon us in so many areas. No slow boat and none of the stupid out of stock for the next three months stuff here.

I looked at other mills to before buying and for instance a friend of mine had a new Mazac 510c. Supposed to be that wonderfull Japanese high tech cut circles around the Haas blah blah blah. His first few months on his new mill saw the spindle go out. X and Y axis would drift and you could come back after lunch and be off .1″. Other things to but that was enough for him and he sold the boat anchor and bought a new Haas VF5 to replace it.

I read the specs on equipment. You do tend to pay attention to those types of things when it is your own money on the line. I know there are better machine available for considerably more. None of them have parts availability or service like Haas. They will wear you out on time and the cost of those repair parts to compared to Haas. And yes shockingly enough this super duper stuff breaks down too inspite of the lofty pricetags.

I watch to the grief my customers run into with European equipment. Yes it may be good but when it breaks down you can be hurt badly with a parts supply system that while not as bad as the Chinese certainly is slow. I have heard of nonsense like “those parts are not scheduled to run until later this month. May we recommend that you keep a spare on the shelf from now on” says the supplier. Not quite the answer a customer wants to hear.

Inspite of the war on manufacturing the enlightened governmental socialists and their fellow travelers the envirowackos have waged for some years now against American industry there are still some very bright spots run by creative individuals who prevail and profit and do so by overcoming hurdles. Haas is one of these. Not run by CPA MBA idiots who think manufacturing savvy is that which finds the quickest path offshore. Haas is now by far the largest US machine tool builder and I expect within a few short years will be the worlds largest. They got there for many reasons and if you are in the market for CNC stuff they certainly deserve serious consideration.

Gotta go now, I have a machine to hook up 🙂

The old warrior on the way out.

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The value of cheap labor to the end buyer.

Posted on April 27, 2012 | 4 comments

Won’t be a long post today and nothing to do directly with CAD. It does however have a lot to do with how your business functions. The ability of leaders in the manufacturing sector of the USA to manage actual factories and produce here has become too much work for many. Primarily MBA and CPA types who understand the dollar today and for the next ninety days as they manipulate things for the dog and pony show at the stock market with the goal of getting more money for themselves in salaries and bonuses they have not truly earned. It’s true believe it or not and their compensation is way out of line with historic norms.

Unlike an Engineering grad running a factory who understands processes and the real end result of stupid cost cutting measures these guys only seem to see cheap labor and parts as the Holy Grail of efficiency.

Two anecdotes come to mind here and they happened to me. Years ago I had a Lincoln SP250 mig welder. Nothing but trouble and I replaced torches and liners with great regularity with invariably short-lived results before erratic wire feed would ruin my days again. At this time Lincoln had been taken over by Bankers who used MBA and CPA types who ran the company according to “cost-effective” savings in components. I struggled with this sorry machine for a few years when one day I get a call from my distributor. He tells me he has the solution to my problem. It turns out that the idler roller on the wire feed drive was made of UHMW which flexed under load allowing for erratic feed speeds. The new replacement one was of Delrin and was rigid enough to do the job.

Lincoln had done this to me in other areas on other machines over the years but this was the last straw. This MBA CPA mentality had made my work and I suffer for years because they could save a dollar on a critical part. The end result of this is that I have never and will never look at another Lincoln machine again. They can’t be trusted to be worried about my bottom line too.

This week I am looking for an air dryer for my new Haas VF4. Shop around and then remember a great big Ingersoll Rand plant north of Nashville. So I call the local Ingersoll distributor and ask about a 25cfm unit. None here but one in North Carolina. Alright do you have anything close to that in stock here? Well no. We have one listed in our catalogue but we won’t have any more of those until JUNE.

OK, the light goes on and my next question is “where are these made”?  The poor lady dreaded this question and it was easy to hear the hesitation in her voice as she admitted that they would have to wait for the next slow boat from China. Parts are the same way and so you run the risk of being shut down because your critical replacement part may well be waiting for the next shipping container to be filled. But these bean counters saved production costs, or so they think.

Ended up with Zeks who makes the units they sell here in the USA. Oh, and they have lots of spare parts too. Ordered it Wednesday and it shipped from the factory Thursday and I will have it Monday. The real kicker is that it was $1,500.00 for a 64cfm unit and the Ingersoll “wait for the MBA CPA China shipping container to arrive” 25cfm unit was almost as expensive.

So all you bean counters at Ingersoll Rand, what is your profit from me now when you have just lost any chance at my business because you care nothing for my business?

Have you ever noticed how so much of this stuff from China never seems to reflect that deep CPA MBA generated cost savings to the end buyer? Or if it is cheap the quality is so wretched that at the end of the year you spent more by having to buy three instead of just one which would have been higher priced but domestically produced.

My whole point in this post today is to let the world know that this guy looks at more than just initial price and so perhaps should the rest of us. It is time we stop hamstringing ourselves with unacceptable quality and support and demand that the people we do business with think of our bottom line to. Ask where it was made and how it is supported before you buy and determine before you buy if your business afford to wait for the next slow boat of parts.

I could fill page after page of things I have seen and personally had to deal with because rather than dig in deep and figure out how to do things more effectively MBA CPA types just slash and burn and look for how to manipulate numbers for their next quarters bonuses. It’s not a very stellar ability to bring to the world of manufacturing.

My old Haas VF3 was built in 11-93. My 18-year-old Haas still has every part available for quick “no boat required” delivery with a superb best in class support network. It is reasonably priced and tons of factories make tons of money with these things every day. But then Haas is not run by CPA MBA degreed idiots.

Since the only thing many of these guys understand is money may I suggest you do like me. Deprive them of your money where ever possible till they get things right. Often wondered who was going to buy their made in China crap if no one was working here anymore anyway.

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