ACU-RITE came up BIG!!

Hey guys,
I am a high school industrial technology teacher in Iowa and I've wanted to bring a machine shop back to our high school for a while now. They used to have one but it was closed and sold off when the teacher retired. Well, I have been fortunate to acquire a CNC knee mill and two Clausing Metosa manual lathes. I am excited for our students to get the opportunity to learn new skills and make some cool stuff.
Heres for my story I am posting about. We have an ACU-RITE MillPwr2 controller on our CNC mill. When the electrician got power to it, I fired it up and started playing with it. I was jogging the Y-axis and the Z-axis but the X wouldn't move. It was giving me a Servo Fault. I called Heidenhain and was in the process of speaking to a rep about how to fix the problem. I was probably 20 feet away from the machine during the call and the X-axis mysteriously took off and over traveled. Much to my dismay the encoder bit the dust, HARD. The scale looked okay to me and when I called to possibly order a new encoder, I was told the system was too old and that I would have to buy a new scale AND encoder. The price was around $1,000. My heart sank. I know there are several people on here that would have costs much higher then that but I work in a school and we just spend $9,000 on this equipment and we haven't bought tooling yet.... I was coming to the realization that CNC machining was out of the cards at this time. We would have to run the mill manually. That was a difficult phone call. I must've sounded pretty distraught because the folks at ACU-RITE called me a few hours later and told us they would like to donate and new scale/encoder to us. I couldn't believe the generosity of this company. I didn't know what to say. They even offered to pay for the shipping. I got it installed and everything is good now. (*The X-Servo fault* I don't know much about computers/electronics but I opened up the motor housing and there was a 10-20 pin connector in there that was unplugged. That was the problem. When I plugged it in, it worked fine. I wish I had known about that beforehand. I just wanted to give a big shout out to ACU-RITE for helping us out big time. If it wasn't for them, we would surely be lost.

Hell - I wish they would provide half-as good service for stuff people (me) have actually paid for! I've got a Vue DRO that has had issues since the day I bought it.

None-the-less, glad your issue was handled so well, and glad that you are spear-heading/teaching machining.

Brent

It is really great when companies step up to help out our future generations! As a fellow teacher I sure do appreciate it. I also appreciate the additional guidance from various retailers and manufacturers that I have received when I have had questions . As a Tech "shop" teacher in a small school I am expected to know the ins and outs of everything from forestry and construction to cnc milling to robotics and graphic design and let me tell you I have some questions. Thanks to those of you helping out schools and thanks for the understanding when we don't know everything that we should.

ajk2004 said:

......I was told the system was too old and that I would have to buy a new scale AND encoder.

Click to expand...

This ^ has been my experience with Heidenhain. 10 year old equipment and they no longer support it. Then tell you that the only fix is to buy the entire new system.

Good to hear they fixed you up for free! The state of industrial ed in our high schools is a disgrace. The company I retired from gave surplus material and reground tooling to some of the local high schools and in one case sold an 8 year old Kitamura to a school for $1500. Just enough to cover the cost of us moving it and installing at the school. Businesses should help when they can. One of the teachers told me his budget for consumables (cutting tools, material, welding supplies, etc.) was $350 per semester. Seemed to me that the administration was trying to starve the program out of existence.

Antarctica said:

Hell - I wish they would provide half-as good service for stuff people (me) have actually paid for! I've got a Vue DRO that has had issues since the day I bought it.

None-the-less, glad your issue was handled so well, and glad that you are spear-heading/teaching machining.

Brent

Click to expand...

Mind if I ask what issues you have been having with your VUE?

Jon
H&W Machine Repair

Hi Jon -

This is actually the vue that was in question from some of our other (sometimes offline) discussions, though we've never discussed some of these technical issues.

When I bought this DRO, it was at some transition point (hardware design) for the product line. I bought it specifically to be able to put a round part on the table, take three points, calculate center and then drill a bolt circle. I can't even remember the actual job, just that application.

Before I bought the unit, I researched it and found in the manual exactly how to do it, so I bought it. I got the unit, installed it, went to the menus to do that, and the function wasn't to be found. I was confounded, called up their technical support and explained the issue. Frankly, the technical support guy knew almost nothing about the unit and it took several go-arounds with him to explain it. Ultimately, he couldn't figure it out either.

At some point or another, I was put in contact with the product line manager, who was better and took a more pro-active approach in solving the problem. After a few days, he called me back and told me that the hardware internal to it had changed, and I had received the newer version, but but that the feature I was looking for had not yet been implemented in software yet.

Now - an aside. I'm an electrical engineer. I deal with these sort of issues (hardware, software, revision, how shit works, etc) on a regular basis. The fact that the hardware had changed should have had no (significant) affect on their ability to incorporate this functionality, because this functionality is purely calculation. They simply had not linked,compiled and tested this in the code, or something similar.

The PM offered to take the head unit back and send me a refurb'ed old unit that had the capability, but I kinda thought that sucked. I had paid about $1200 for this thing and damned if I wanted an old unit. Hell I was already replacing an old DRO. I didn't think it could possibly take long for them to address the issue, and told the guy I'd wait and update the software when they implemented the feature.

So I waited. Pinged the guy occasionally. Finally, after about a year, he sent me some new code with the feature implemented.

I loaded it (I think I had to update the bootloader also), and it works fine with one annoying exception.

When you start up the DRO, it comes up reading that there is a memory fault. Now this issue coincided EXACTLY with that new code being updated. Based on the above 'aside', I know there is no memory fault. Undoubtedly, there is some incorrectly calculated checksum or something similar, probably a result of the same poorly or untested approach to releasing code that I'd received the first time. I think I asked about it and I can't remember the answer, but I didn't pursue it (his response was exactly what you'd expect - something to the effect that your unit is failed, which is BS).

So I just leave it as is. I imagine that there's probably some new revision of code that is probably correct by now. But at that point, I was tired of dealing with them, frankly tired of the entire hassle of buying this DRO (to include the other hassles that were associated with it).

So it stays that way as of now. Comes up with an error. You press one button again and it works fine. Annoying that I spent $1200 for something that has such a stupid problem, but tired of f'ing with it and Acu-rite, and for damn sure don't want to do anything to mess it up worse than it is.

As a final aside, the DRO that I replaced with the VUE was an Acu-rite, still worked perfectly. It is older than any other DRO I have run across - a true dinosaur with some post-nixie tube display. Some sort of thing where the display wires get hot and glow to show the numbers but they are not in tubes. I've never seen anything like it. I can try to post a pic in a separate thread if anyone is interested.

Brent

It is nice when people do the right thing.


Couple years ago I helped a high school robotics program. Outright I told them I would donate materials, my time, machine time only asking they pay for my mans time..what I pay my guy, not hourly rate. It was over a day of make it smaller, no larger, higher, shorter...this is perfect but it can't be steel. Anyway, I invoiced for 6 hrs, in return I received a picture of the team, their entry with a Thanks...no check.

Overall glad I did what I thought was the right thing...but picture hanging on wall reminds me about being overly generous

SIM said:

It is nice when people do the right thing.


Couple years ago I helped a high school robotics program. Outright I told them I would donate materials, my time, machine time only asking they pay for my mans time..what I pay my guy, not hourly rate. It was over a day of make it smaller, no larger, higher, shorter...this is perfect but it can't be steel. Anyway, I invoiced for 6 hrs, in return I received a picture of the team, their entry with a Thanks...no check.

Overall glad I did what I thought was the right thing...but picture hanging on wall reminds me about being overly generous

Click to expand...

I sure hope you asked very clearly up front that the robotics program would be expected to pay. I mentor the local high school's robotic program and donate my weekend time on their machines (Haas TM-1 and Grixxlie lathe), and evenings and weekends on my machines during build season. They just do not have the budget to be paying for labor; it's tough enough to afford the hardware like raw stock, COTS motors, gearboxes, pneumatics, and controls. I agree it can be frustrating when CAD has mistakes, kids mess up or lose good parts, etc., etc., but they are learning. It's not like I was any better when I was their age.

@Antartica Thanks man, I wasnt sure if this was the same VUE or not. I have seen where certain functions on older units cant work with the hardware that they have and require updated hardware. Typically I see that when the backlight goes out on the older unit, it requires updated hardware on the motherboard (I think) and not just work on that.

I havent heard of your specific issue, but I also know that this was before my time and was probably fixed by the time I came along.

If you want me to see what I can do for ya, please let me know.

Jon
H&W Machine Repair

Hi Jon -

I appreciate the offer. Let me try to be responsible for my own problem first and raise the issue again with them. I'll first start by finding the old code they sent me (so that I'm confident I can get back to what I have) and maybe then check for new code online.

If none of that works, I may contact you.

Brent

I know this is an old thread... but I wanted to post this link. After I saw this thread, I hit up some buddies at Heidenhain and sent them this story. And they ran this and it just went out.

Teacher Thankful for ACU-RITE Scale Donation - HEIDENHAIN

Jon
H&W Machine Repair