More power please!

Discuss Thermwood 3-axis Machinery, Controller, and Software.

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Forrest Chapman
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More power please!

Post by Forrest Chapman »

Hey tech guys,

I spoke with Jason earlier and he directed me to you. I'd like to upgrade my 91000 controler to make it faster. Can I do this? I realize rolling nest is a complicated program, but I use another program that takes less than 1 minute to nest a job on a more powerful PC. The same job from ecabs takes 18 minutes in rolling nest. So maybe if I have more power it will take less time.

Forrest
Paul Ford
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Post by Paul Ford »

While on the topic of 9100 controllers.... What antivirus program is everyone using? Ours didnt come with one on it. probably well over due for me to put one on. What are your thoughts on AVG Free? Or Avast!???
Nick M Singer
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Post by Nick M Singer »

As far as the PC in your controller is concerned you are not going to be able to do much. The mother-board is essentially redundant and is only being used to accomodate the special header card developed by Thermwood that sits in an ISA slot. Newer boards simply do not have ISA slots or they are very rare. Not only this you would have to find a board with the correct layout. You are limited therefore to PIII processors as adding more RAM (if you can find the correct type) is not going to speed things up as nesting is a mainly arithmetic process and therefore processor dependent. I doubt that you would find a PIII much faster than the one already installed so you are essentially, as are we all, snookered. What may be worth considering is being able to run Rolling Nest stand alone, on a PC of a higher spec. This is something for Thermwood to think about and I dont understand why it is not possible to run it on lets say the same PC one runs eCabs on. It would save a lot of running backwards and forwards and enable one to use it on high powered units saving a lot of time. Other advantages of this would be being able to trouble shoot code before running it, in a more comfortable environment such as ones office.
Bill Rutherford
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Post by Bill Rutherford »

Forest,
I am really shocked to hear you say that nesting a job is taking 18 minutes. The longest I have ever waited for a job to nest is 3-4 minutes with most jobs at 10 sheets or less nesting in seconds. The 3-4 minute nest times are jobs that are 25-35 sheets, multiple dados and holes and some flip operations. How many sheet nests are you doing when you experience 18 minute nest times? Just wondering what could be causing this.

Bill R
Nick M Singer
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Post by Nick M Singer »

I second Bill, most jobs that I run take under a minute or a couple of minutes to nest. There must be something else putting the brakes on things or you are running some really huge jobs. I am going to nest a job of 30 sheets now and I will report back on the time it takes. Watch this space...
Forrest Chapman
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Post by Forrest Chapman »

Hey guys,

I'm currently cutting a 39 sheet job with lots of operations. I asked Jason about getting rolling nest for my PC for the same reasons you suggested Nick. He said I'd have to talk to my local rep. presumably to purchace it. I do tie up alot of time at the machine trying to trouble shoot, mainly jobs from other shops. If you think 18 min. is a long time, I had another job recently that took 10min. to nest and 35min. to write code. It had well over 100 sheets of non grain material. I thought it had locked up and almost rebooted but walked away for something and when I got back it was just completing. I hope something can be done for this.

Forrest
Nick M Singer
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Post by Nick M Singer »

Hey Forrest. I see you guys are awake now. Where is SC? I have just coome back from nesting a 34 sheet job and it took 2min 18sec.
Bill Rutherford
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Post by Bill Rutherford »

Forest,
How many files in the 39 sheet job? If it is not to many and if you want I will try nesting it on my control and let you know how long it takes. I am still not convinced that this is not a problem on your control. Let me know.

Bill
Forrest Chapman
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Post by Forrest Chapman »

Bill,

I will email you the file by 10 am.

Forrest
Bill Rutherford
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Post by Bill Rutherford »

Forest,
I just finished nesting and creating code. 3 Min 24 Sec from the point I pressed load until I was scrolling through the sheets and 6 Min 20 Sec to generate the code. I would call field service and let them know what is going on. It definitely sounds like something may be corrupt. I nested this on version 4.67 (I have not gotten around to upgrading any further)

On another note, my operator would KILL me with that many flip operations, I am sure you did everything possible to minimize them, but still. How long do you anticipate to actually machine the job?

Hope this helps, let me know what you find out.

Bill R
Forrest Chapman
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Post by Forrest Chapman »

Bill,

Thanks for your time. Your right about there being alot of flip ops. The cabinets are somewhat complicated and theres multiples of each one. Basicaly I'm working with a GC company and have designed moduler cabs for 3 bank jobs that are going to be used as a standard for many other banks, more recently ones affected by the hurricane. So far 39.
Hopefully the nesting issue is fixable.

PS. I'm running 4.56, do you think this is contributing to the slow load?

Thanks,
Forrest
Bill Rutherford
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Post by Bill Rutherford »

Forest,
I do not know if 4.56 is a contributing factor or not. I can tell you that 4.67 is stable for us. I can e-mail you the update for 4.67 or you can download 4.73 from the website. Obviously I can't vouch for 4.73 as we have not tried it yet.

Given what is going on I think I would talk to field service about re-installing rolling nest; something may have gotten corrupted. A word of warning though, be sure they help you back up your tooling settings and your offall library first or you will be starting from scratch (happened to us once)

Bill
Forrest Chapman
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Post by Forrest Chapman »

Bill,

Thanks for everything.

Forrest
Jeff Norris
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Post by Jeff Norris »

my machine was built in 99' and doesent take very long to nest 40 sheets, i have a pentium 3 400mhz, i know the tyan motherboard will take faster and have considered upgrading but it really hasent been a problem. i too have inquired about running rolling nest on a pc, i know they have it at thermwood for the tech support and i really would like to have it myself to keep from running to the machine all the time. i know i could get more done .
Forrest Chapman
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Post by Forrest Chapman »

Thanks everyone,

I defraged and that has helped tremendously. Still would like to see it faster though it took almost 6 minutes to nest and write code for a 36 sheet simple job. I'm thinking in the future I'll break the jobs up. Alot of these are for parts only customers and I'm not sure how they will feel about this.

Forrest
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