Got my lathe and mill today...and the rest of the story is...

Have to add that I have now been unbanned apparently from the site that had banned me and they also had immediately deleted the thread and made it all go away. Guess sometimes cooler heads do prevail. Nothing like hotheads with moderator privledges.

And I have to add a strange fact about shipping. When tracking my first shipment I was amazed to see the mill go from Bellingham to Everett, then Everett to Seattle then Seattle to Portland before going on back to Seattle? I figure they warehouse it until the scheduled delivery, but still relatively strange. I figured it was unique to that mills journey, so when tracking the new mill this time, it took the same route following the same schedule. Go figure. I guess I should be glad I'm getting my $99 worth of freight charges :) The new mill should be delivered to the barge today! Color me excited.
 
Commercial shipping follows a preset route with regular port calls so it would show all the ports it stops in before it is delivered. I love the mail I get from China. goes to origin post, the to SFC overseas wharehouse, then customs, then chicago then New York then Baltimore and on to it's destination on a trck. No wonder it takes 30 days for small packages to arrive from china. It wanders around for two weeks here in the US before they get it on a truck for delivery. Hopefully you will have you machine by the weekend and you can take some pics of the new chips as they come off the machine....
Bob
 
I really can't see that a forum that wants to be a forum for professional machines is doing anything wrong. That's their choice. There are hobby sites like this one if you have a hobby grade machine.

This site does keep things polite,which I like. That's a different issue.
 
Not to be contentious, but I would argue that scale does not have anything to do with "professional." There are a lot of small scale cnc machines (and non-cnc machines) doing professional work. And for that matter hobby (not making money from it) compared to professional (making money from it) doesn't change any of the other dynamics. I could see if it was a business management site, but best practices and economy, and quality control, etc... relate to all of us regardless of the scale or cost of machines. Like I said, it is their site and they can do what ever they want, but that doesn't mean that it isn't illogical.
 
It is the prevailing view that some machines would never be used on a large scale in the industrial/professional sector. They are very likely correct. I've been in it for a long time, and as business owner, there are many machines that simply have no place in a commercial environment. It has nothing to do with size or capacity of the machines. Can you imagine Boeing buying anything from LMC, or Grizzly? I can't. The choice that site makes is their own, and they shouldn't really be criticized for choosing their own course. It's a freedom we all have. As I see it, their focus is on the processes and problems related to larger commercial concerns, and that is their right. The seeming prejudice against certain types of machines, or country of origin, is only a mechanism to filter out certain elements that they feel don't fit their mission, and although I can't abide the manner with which they exercise that prerogative, it is just that.

Of course, there is a sub-chapter to this. I have seen, and there are manufactured, many industrial machines in the same countries which seem to garner attention in the small machine/hobby realm. Not all discussion of those machines seems to be taboo there. That apparently is based more on the user than the machine itself. There are some of those industrial sized machines that I personally consider substandard, and would never purchase for commercial use. Nothing against the CoO, or the nationality of the people who design and build it. I just have issues with the quality and performance of enough samples of them to make me decide the way I do. And that is my prerogative. But those machines you may see under discussion there. So it may seem arbitrary, but there is some method in the seeming madness.

OK.....hijack over. Back to the local news.
 
I want to be clear that I am not lobbying for anything. I sincerely don't care what the other site does. My point is that their guidelines were first of all not applicable to the thread, and then a distant second but completely unrelated point that their rule is arbitrary and ill defined as you pointed out. As I said, if the majority of discussions were about manufacturing processes and toolling up for production runs I wouldn't say a word about "hobby" mills not fitting in there. An interesting poll was posted on the cnc forum as to how many shops are making profit and then a seperate one as to shop rates that illustrated to me that there are a great many small mills out their being used in a professional if not industrial capacity.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top