Green Machining with Mastercam

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Here is an interview with Mark Summers president of President CNC Software at Mastercam, Mastercam stood out to me as one of the few manufacturing companies that made greening even an issue worth mentioning.  Even the smallest steps taken to minimize the damage done by industry is immensely important in these critical times off the bottom line. With all the harm that manufacturing causes the earth and how much we rely on it to keep our world turning it seems more important then ever to bring our attention to this. Society is held together by technology and manufacturing and it is companies like this who make an effort to preserve our earth so important in our rapidly changing times

What are the environmental efforts being made right now by the manufacturing industry as a whole?

Mark: I don’t know if there is enough information to summarize the efforts made by the manufacturing industry but my guess is that many businesses are at least thinking about these issues and many will act in the next few years in various ways.

Where does Mastercam stand in this context, how do you measure up or exceed expectations or current industry standards for greening.

Mark: The expectations are vague and not official unless you’re LEEDS certified so it’s up to the decision makers in each company to decide what level of sustainability to integrate. However I think we measure up pretty well in the green department. We have made both small improvements and large improvements in the way we operate our facility and the way we use energy. Small ideas include using dishes, glasses and ceramic coffee mugs instead of throw away items. (We have six energy star dishwashers). We compost all of our coffee grounds and food waste so as not to use fossil fuel to haul garbage around for no good reason. In our recent building addition we made sure to use low V.O.C. paint and PVC free carpet to improve our indoor air quality. We’ve installed a fresh air heat exchanger so that we don’t lose valuable heat when bringing in fresh air from outside. All of the windows in the building open if occupants want fresh air when weather permits and a large amount of windows allow us to use more natural light rather than electric lights, which are energy efficient fluorescent lights. All of the lumber in the addition was FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified. All of our printing is done on 100% recycled paper with environmental ink and over time we have been printing less and supplying more documents electronically. Many of the employees work from home 2 or 3 days a week to reduce fuel usage.
Like most businesses the real opportunity to make a difference in energy usage is the way a building is heated and cooled. Our 50,000 sq. ft. building is 100% geothermal and does not have a backup system. We have 46 wells that are 300 feet deep that extract either heat or cold out of the ground to heat or cool the building and make our hot water as well. Since the only energy source we use is electricity we decided to install a 72kw photovoltaic system to make some of our own. The solar system is newly installed but it appears we are making about 30% of the electricity that we use. That portion of our electricity will cost the same for about 30 years which is the predicted life of the solar panels.

Do you think technology has the ability to make our society sustainable, what social and scientific steps do you feel are needed to make this happen.

Mark: Yes, I think we have the technology to be 100% sustainable but it will take time and large investments and a change in our living standards. The laws of nature will eventually demand that we all become sustainable in our work and home life and making changes sooner rather than later will allow a smoother and less painful transition. The social steps that need to happen are mostly financial to start with since cost seems to have a way of getting everyone’s attention. Keeping fuel prices high via taxes will keep the pressure on all of us to pay greater attention to the way we live. Lobbying for low fuel costs to keep the economy going is short term thinking and just putting off the inevitable. A small amount of pain now might avoid real problems in the future. This theoretical fuel tax revenue could be used for tax credits and rebates to help fund more homes and businesses that invest in alternative energy. If the U.S. government can find a way to spend over half a trillion dollars to fight a war we can surely find the same amount of money to invest in more clean energy ideas that could actually avoid a war.

You were a “green” company before “green” really existed. What is the history of your company’s progress with its environmental efforts?

Mark: We have always tried to pay attention to our energy and material usage. My depression era parents might have had some influence in this area. We built our first building in 1989 about five miles from our current building and incorporated a geothermal system and passive solar system. Oil deliveries and burning oil in a furnace never really made much sense to me.

Are you noticing any other manufacturing companies going green or being socially responsible? If not, why do you think this is and what would it take to change this trend.

Mark: I know of one local shop that is environmentally aware and is in the process of installing a 32kw photovoltaic system to make some of their electricity. The Connecticut Clean Energy Fund offers a generous rebate for this type of system and I am certain that other shops are acting. Some businesses are motivated to save money and some are motivated to save the environment. Either way works.

What is your view on the peak oil crisis and how it will and has affected industry and manufacturing?

The peak oil crisis and high energy cost spike was a much needed wake up call for all of us. Hopefully the recent drop in oil prices won’t allow us to forget that we need to pay attention and make some changes. I think most people realize that was just a little taste of what’s coming and we need to be ready when cheap energy is no longer available. There are many ways to “be ready”. Take advantage of the energy incentive programs that are available right now. Hire an energy company to audit your operation and then act on at least some of the advice. Use less energy and make some of your own. Almost any business can afford a few solar panels and encourage recycling and shutting the lights off. Do something and then tell people about it, in that order.

Are there any new greening initiatives at your company, underway or being discussed?

We’re not obsessed with green ideas since we still need to spend most of our time operating the business so it stay healthy but we do talk about energy and environmental ideas regularly. Lately we have been monitoring many of our electronic devices to see how much power they used when turned “off”. You might be surprised to learn that many of these devices such as computers, printers, fax machines, cable boxes, dvd players etc. steal your power all the time. A $25 Kill A Watt meter will help you uncover these electric injustices and will surely pay for itself in short order provided you act on your findings. Another current project is to add more computerized controls to our HVAC system to make sure it runs only when necessary. For example, many people forget to adjust the heat or AC when they leave at night or the weekends. A computer can make that adjustment easily and with more consistency than a human and save lots of energy in the process. In other words, an efficient system that isn’t controlled properly isn’t really that efficient.

How does the lax environmental regulations in China and India fit into the global environmental solution. (this question is intentionally open ended, anything interesting you have to say on this, would be good)

Well, we all live in the same world and the responsibility level of other countries affects us all. My opinion is that the countries that care about the goal of sustainability and environmental responsibility should first offer technical and financial help to the countries that need it if they can. If the offending countries ignore sincere help then the heat should be turned up and we should reduce or avoid doing business with countries that don’t toe the line. Countries are just a collection of people and policies and sometimes a repercussion needs to be felt before action takes place. When my kids leave the lights on in their room I take the bulbs out of the offending light to send a small message. A country might need a larger message in a similar fashion.

What new and exciting things are happening right now over at Mastercam?

We are continuously working on new ideas for our CAD CAM product called Mastercam as we have been for 25 years and this year has proven to be successful as well. Our cautious but constant growth allows us to serve our customers as they expect now and in the foreseeable future and we will continue our ever present goal of reaching sustainability.

go here for a full list of Mastercams green commitments

check out our article on green anodizing

buy CNC related books and tools on amazon

Linus Torvald’s rant against C++

http://lwn.net/Articles/249460/ C++ is a horrible language. It’s made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it’s much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do *nothing* but keep the C++ programmers ouhttp://lwn.net/Articles/249460/ C++ is a horrible language. It’s made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it’s much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do *nothing* but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C. In other words: the choice of C is the only sane choice. I know Miles Bader jokingly said “to piss you off”, but it’s actually true. I’ve come to the conclusion that any programmer that would prefer the project to be in C++ over C is likely a programmer that I really *would* prefer to piss off, so that he doesn’t come and screw up any project I’m involved with. C++ leads to really really bad design choices. You invariably start using the “nice” library features of the language like STL and Boost and other total and utter crap, that may “help” you program, but causes: - infinite amounts of pain when they don’t work (and anybody who tells me that STL and especially Boost are stable and portable is just so full of BS that it’s not even funny) - inefficient abstracted programming models where two years down the road you notice that some abstraction wasn’t very efficient, but now all your code depends on all the nice object models around it, and you cannot fix it without rewriting your app. In other words, the only way to do good, efficient, and system-level and portable C++ ends up to limit yourself to all the things that are basically available in C. And limiting your project to C means that people don’t screw that up, and also means that you get a lot of programmers that do actually understand low-level issues and don’t screw things up with any idiotic “object model” crap. So I’m sorry, but for something like git, where efficiency was a primary objective, the “advantages” of C++ is just a huge mistake. The fact that we also piss off people who cannot see that is just a big additional advantage. If you want a VCS that is written in C++, go play with Monotone. Really. They use a “real database”. They use “nice object-oriented libraries”. They use “nice C++ abstractions”. And quite frankly, as a result of all these design decisions that sound so appealing to some CS people, the end result is a horrible and unmaintainable mess. But I’m sure you’d like it more than git. Linust, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C. In other words: the choice of C is the only sane choice. I know Miles Bader jokingly said “to piss you off”, but it’s actually true. I’ve come to the conclusion that any programmer that would prefer the project to be in C++ over C is likely a programmer that I really *would* prefer to piss off, so that he doesn’t come and screw up any project I’m involved with. C++ leads to really really bad design choices. You invariably start using the “nice” library features of the language like STL and Boost and other total and utter crap, that may “help” you program, but causes: - infinite amounts of pain when they don’t work (and anybody who tells me that STL and especially Boost are stable and portable is just so full of BS that it’s not even funny) - inefficient abstracted programming models where two years down the road you notice that some abstraction wasn’t very efficient, but now all your code depends on all the nice object models around it, and you cannot fix it without rewriting your app. In other words, the only way to do good, efficient, and system-level and portable C++ ends up to limit yourself to all the things that are basically available in C. And limiting your project to C means that people don’t screw that up, and also means that you get a lot of programmers that do actually understand low-level issues and don’t screw things up with any idiotic “object model” crap. So I’m sorry, but for something like git, where efficiency was a primary objective, the “advantages” of C++ is just a huge mistake. The fact that we also piss off people who cannot see that is just a big additional advantage. If you want a VCS that is written in C++, go play with Monotone. Really. They use a “real database”. They use “nice object-oriented libraries”. They use “nice C++ abstractions”. And quite frankly, as a result of all these design decisions that sound so appealing to some CS people, the end result is a horrible and unmaintainable mess. But I’m sure you’d like it more than git. Linus

Web Site Directory

DIY 12 steps

1. Don’t fear trying something new -

When you are new to modding, you might be afraid to use a soldering iron, you might be unsure of where to start at first. That’s ok, start with general areas instead. What interests you most? Do you like electronics, computers, woodworking or knitting? (yes there are mods for woodworking and knitting.) But start in your preferred general area and get to reading.

Start with Google and search for for what your interested. there is always plenty of info there.

2. Start with something small -

Rome wasn’t hacked in a day. So if you are just starting out don’t start with a build your own personal helicopter project. Start with something manageable like one of the many LED projects you can find at Instructables or Make.Then as you learn, try more challenging projects.

2. Find the area you love -

Some people like LEDs, others like robots, I’m a connection guy myself. I like connecting different gadgets and making them work together. As you begin your quest as a master modder, then you’ll start to discover what focus you like best. Stick with that area so you can increase your odds of inventing something new.As a master DIYer, you’ll increase your odds of inventing the next big thing.

3. Build before you buy -

Isn’t it sad the day you pick up your iPod or remote control and suddenly it isn’t working? Not necessarily if you are a DIYer. Broken stuff presents a great opportunity to get under the hood and see if you can fix it.Once my son’s iPod wouldn’t start. I tried charging it, soft and hard resetting it. Still, all I saw was the sad mac face.

So I did some surfing and found a trick that just might work. I pulled out my Leatherman, opened up the iPod and placed a business card folded up underneath the hard drive. Low and behold, once I put it back together, the iPod booted and played music! In fact, I tried it again just this morning and it works fine.

4. Conserve your cash -

I think most passionate DIYers don’t like buying new stuff if there is a chance they can fix or make better what they already have. If you can just go out and buy a new Tivo any time you want it, there’s no real benefit to building your own PVR.The master at DIY knows electronics and gadgets decrease in value faster than a new car in a blasting zone. So if we can save money by repairing what’s broken, we have more money to spend on new gadgets and hacks.

5. Teach as you go -

One of the best ways to embed knowledge in your brain is to teach others. This enhances your creativity and once you’ve got others who know what you know, then there is great problem solving power in bouncing ideas off of each other.

6. Write procedures -

Unlike an elephant, humans can forget. You might remember a time when a great family recipe was lost because your aunt passed away or developed Alzheimer’s . I know there are countless great recipes lost forever due to the lack of a written recipe. My Grandmother’s gooseberry pie? Lost for eternity. My grandfather’s fried chicken? Nevermore…How better would it have been if they handed down written recipes. I could have archived it in a family recipe booklet for this and future generations.

When you create a new hack, be sure to write up procedures. Procedures let you go back in case you forget a resistor, measurement or solder joint. Plus, procedures are an easy way for you to teach others. You can even post your procedures to your blog to teach thousands of people your hack.

7. Take photos -

Photos of the steps in your procedures are perhaps the most powerful descriptors. You save time, by not having to write every last nuance of detail. Also, pictures cross all language barriers. You don’t have to know French to understand the Eiffel tower. The picture says it all.

Photos will allow you to also communicate your craft effectively with people from different countries and backgrounds. Additionally, there are a few of us who can’t read our own handwriting, a picture can rescue that DIY from being lost forever.

8. Study the Art of DIYing -

When you’ve found the area of hacking you love, study it. Collect books, articles and You Tubes of projects that interest you. You never know when you might have a rainy day and a box of LEDs just begging to be put together into a new Infrared headset.

9. Collect Parts -

Let’s face it, gadgets break. They age, and they become outdated. That doesn’t mean you have to throw it all away. An old (out of warranty) MP3 player is a good excuse to do some hacking. Take it apart and collect some of the more valuable parts inside. LEDs can be reused. USB ports can be reused. Some memory cards are good too. But don’t go too crazy with saving every last part and broken gadget.

A desk drawer full of spare parts is good – a shoe box full of parts is better. A garage cluttered with parts is a sign you don’t know how to separate the wheat from the chaff, so you are collecting everything. If that’s the case, it’s time to go back to studying.

Professionally, I’ve cleaned up server rooms where the admin(s) saved every last piece of broken equipment. Stuff piled 5 foot high where you couldn’t even walk. This is a sign that they don’t understand the equipment, what’s valuable and what’s not. When I get done, all that’s left is a filing cabinet of hot spare storage, Software licensing and a drawer full of emergency parts and cables. If an entire network DIY setup can consume just 1 filing cabinet, your home parts should fit into a desk drawer.

Note: Use caution when taking apart something that plugs into a wall – especially monitors. I don’t recommend taking apart old tube monitors because the tubes carry a charge and you can electrocute yourself. Just use common sense and read up before delving into an area you aren’t experienced.

11. Finish your projects -

Don’t be like the guy who has a car up on blocks in his front yard for 2 years. Finish your project or throw it out. Master DIYers always complete their experiments – even if they fail. If you fail, no biggie, throw it out and start something new. But what’s important is finishing. You can’t reach anuber -level of hacking expertise if you don’t finish your projects – plus, having a bunch of half finished projects lying around is an eyesore.

build your own helicopter

this post is on Helisport’s Mosquito

for $28,500 Helisport the Mosquito XE ultralight helicopter is an amazingly cool little single-seat aircraft.  Made in Canada by the Innovator Technology company for over 10 years, the Mosquito has proven to be a fairly solid product.  It’s 20 ft long and weighs 298 lbs. It’s powered by an MZ202 2-cylinder 2-stroke engine and has a maximum speed of 75 mph and has the ability to hover in ground effect at 8,000 ft (estimated). The Mosquito is built from a kit that’s delivered in five sub-groups: airframe and construction plans, control system, drive system, engine system, and rotor system. Standard shop tools are required to cut and form some of the simple frame and control parts and for bolt and rivet assembly. A small amount of welding is required on the exhaust system. An information pack is available from the manufacturer for $25 (Canadian), including a DVD, sample drawings and specifications.

The company gives a $2000 rebate to builders who complete flight training before purchasing the rotor system kit – this might be a good idea if you don’t want to smash into a tree, check out  the video of the copter in action here. (and yeah it’s slightly scary)

Top Wired Colleges

Recently my alma mater, Eckerd College, was voted number number 7 in the Princeton Review’s and PC magazines list of Top Wired Colleges.  to put this in perspective MIT was voted 20 and stamford 8. out of all the schools selected Kansas State is the only one to block peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. This is  surprising given the passing of a bill by the House of Representatives in February that would take federal money from schools lacking a policy to discourage P2P use for downloading and distributing copyrighted materials. The bill, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2008, has since passed the Senate and was recently signed into law by the president.  now other colleges may risk losing government funding if they do not comply. luckily most of these schools are small private schools with little government funding as it is.

The IT faculty at Eckerd is always willing to share knowledge and I am glad they are getting the recognition they deserve. some great features that make this one of the most wired schools is.

• Wireless connectivity is available nearly everywhere on the 188-acre campus, whether it’s in a dorm room, classroom, cafeteria or under a palm tree.

• The college boasts its own campus Intranet supported by 59 state-of-the-art servers.

• Should a hurricane or fire strike, classroom and other operations can continue seamlessly with a co-located data center in Tampa. This means few, if any, classroom cancellations because of weather or other disasters.

• And free computer repair is a student perk.

“Last year we fixed about 300 computers,” said George Overly, who runs the repair shop on campus. Once fixed, the shop will install antivirus and antispyware to help students avoid future problems.

• No computer? No problem. Any of the 1,800 students can sign out a laptop, digital camera or video camera.

•  LaundryView (www.laundryview.com) an intranet program where you can login to your computer and find out when your laundry is done, this can also notify you by cell phone or email.

• every one of these schools offers some sort Antivirus solution, we at Eckerd used sophos antivirus, which when configured properly is very effective.

one negative side of all of this is that sometimes this luxery can make students lazy, or wasteful take this quote from an eckerd student.

Sarah Schweig, 21, who was working in the 24-hour computer lab, marveled over the fact she never had to pay for paper.

“They have it all here,” she said. “All the free printing you want.”

When I was at school i saw a tremendous waste of paper from the students who would burn through boxes and boxes of paper.

Heinz R Putz of Fanuc CN

Profile of, Heinz R Putz, Heinz has an interesting educational DVD, and equally interesting interesting life story.

Heinz’s new Fanuc CNC website

My own machining background goes back to an apprenticeship in Germany, I started for the German railroad at 15 years of age, in Northern Germany in a Locomotive Repair Works.  We had 20-25 apprentices each year and everything was first learned by hand, we had an open fire blacksmith shop, a lot of files, big and small hammers and really tough supervisors, not averse to physical punishment. We have a family history of metal work, my Grandfather was a Blacksmith Master in Prussia, according to family history he was the official Blacksmith master in the Emperors Guard regiment. He was quite tall, everyone in the Emperors Guard had to be 2 Meters tall (6.6 feet), I guess it made the Emperor feel taller.

Unfortunately, I inherited none of the metal skills from my Grandfather and until I got into CNC I never really liked my job at all. After immigrating to the US and after working in many, many shops around the US, I took a class in Chicago at a local Community College, it was called NC Engineering. I learned nothing I ever used, but it opened the door to a great job opportunity with SMT(Swedish Machine Tool), a manufacturer of the first real, at least in my opinion; CNC lathe.

SMT had a really good training system, we had a class for our customers in Chicago prior to the machine delivery, followed by 3 days of in-house training, actually programming and producing the customers first parts. We had to rightfully assume that the customers needed to learn everything from speeds and feeds for CNC and CNC math to figure out  the part shape. They of course also needed to learn programming and proper record keeping, tool selection and tool setup.

We were quite successful in selling our CNC lathes, unfortunately we were way too expensive compared to the early Japanese lathes, such as Mori-Seiki with the Fanuc controls. Often, our price was double that of our Japanese competitors and eventually our sales slowly disappeared.

By this time, I had trained many shops all over the US and Canada and I also knew most of the Japanese importers and the people at Fanuc quite well. I was offered a consulting job to re-write manuals and teach for Fanuc in Chicago and between teaching for Fanuc, importers of CNC, many dealers and many shops, I have been busy in trying to teach the efficient use of CNC lathes and mills ever since.

In my CNC DVDs, I try to pass on the knowledge I gained over all these years on to anyone that needs it, and that’s pretty much every shop that uses CNC. To be totally self sufficient with CNC lathes or mills, you need to be able to take a print, know what the material is, sit down and write a program, figure speeds and feeds, do the necessary math, go out to the machine, set the tool, enter the program, double check it, then carefully make the first part. By the time you run your 3. part or so, you should have decrease the cycle time by fine tuning, especially your speeds and feeds.

CAD-Cam packages are great for molds with many, many motions, but for real production, write the program yourself and take all the shortcuts you can. keep in mind that the person that created the software used for programming was most likely not a very good machinist and all packages have to make programs that fit many situations. If I made a program for a very low lot run of 1 or 2 parts, it would look totally different from a program that has a lot run of 1000s.A major concern is that there are very few people left in our industry that actually know how to produce anything without the help of some software. The classical and logical sequence of learning CNC was to be an operator, learn programming and setup, then learn to generate a program with the use of one of the many software packages. Now everything is automated, straight from some computer language to CNC software, with no machining experience in between. All of my in-house training and also the content of the DVDs, is very detailed, below is a sample from my website.

Example: G76 in 2 line format for OT and later controls.
2″ diameter, 20 Threads per Inch, Mild Steel.

O2006*
N1 G50 S1500*
N2 T0101*
N3 G97 S700 M3*(Speed for threading, always in RPM)
N4 G0 X2.2 Z.2 M8*(Rapid to above part, .2″ from face)
N5 G76 P021060 Q20 R5*(The first 2 digits in P represent the amount of finish passes, the next 2 are the pullout distance at the end of the threading motion, expressed in tenths of revolutions, the 60 is the angle of the tool)
N6 G76 X1.94 Z-1.0 P300(total thread depth) Q150(depth of first cut) F.05*
R if needed is the amount of taper over total distance in thread motion.
The P value is figured by taking the F-value times the constant of .6, once figured you also have the X value.
N7 G0 X6.0 Z6.0 M9*
N8 M30*

the website has many detailed examples, with speeds, feeds, explanations, etc.

The website is currently #1 in Google under “Fanuc CNC’, I believe mostly because of the detailed content.