CNC arrives.... :)

[Jim Becker]

Woot! Today was the day! The big pokie truck made it to my local and we did the transfer to a roll-back dance mid-afternoon. A local auction house up the road graciously allowed me to use their parking lot for the exchange. The owner was very understanding about the safety issues that precluded doing this on the busy road in front of my property.

Knowing the delivery was coming after a painfully long two month and one week wait, I spent a little time in the morning "recovering" from a recently finished project and cleaned things up. The spot was ready...

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Man..."big crate" is an understatement. Well built, too. It was holding down the driver's pallet jack nicely, but he had to move it off the trailer so we could proceed with the "extraction"

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This is when the fun began. None of us was "slim" enough to slip by the crate to recover the grapple that, um...escaped...from the cable when it was thrown under it. Yours truly volunteered to journey over the top to do the deed and this was my view during my little confinement in the nice trailer.

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Oooh...I see light at the end of the tunnel...

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Darn...that's a big crate

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Since we were only going 3/4 of a mile down the road to my property, the (really great) tow truck driver decided to leave the package on the back to speed thing up at my shop. He drove slowly, ticking off one dude from NJ who wanted to go much faster, but such is life. Once there, we were ready to unload it in front of my shop's double doors. Note that I do not have "garage" type doors and it was not possible to put the crate through those doors like some folks are able to do.

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The dude set that crate down within 3" of my "line" that insured I could open the doors once things were torn down

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No complaints about this method or this driver...totally worth the hundred bucks and I was nice and paid him in cash, too.(I gave the semi driver a cold drink because he arrived way early from the time the dispatcher expected my delivery and had to wait about 25 minutes for the roll-back to arrive. The latter was out on another job and had to complete it first)

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[Jim Becker]

Darn...that's a big crate...

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Oh, but look what's inside!

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It only took about 30 minutes for me to "disrobe" the machine and thankfully, I didn't lose even a single screw in the driveway. (really important for sure)

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Several of our honey bees came to visit during the process. While they liked the color, they expressed dismay that the mascot is a wasp/hornet rather than a bee. Go figure...

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I bought an inexpensive scissor jack to use with the CNC when I have to/want to move it. Its first job was to assist with installing the casters necessary to move a 900 lb machine anywhere.

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At this point, my older daughter was enthusiastically helping and installed two of the four casters while I did the other two.

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[Jim Becker]

Material from the crate was used to turn the pallet into a platform as the first part of getting the machine moved into my shop.

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The same principle applied to extending things to/through the shop door

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I will mention at this point that I miscalculated placement of the 2x material under the OSB ramp and, um...got to use the jack a little more than originally planned. Yup...a caster went through. I added some additional sheet stock/boards under the path and the rest of the journey was successful. The gantry "just" fit through the 6' wide double doors. Whew!

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And...the "Yellow Monster" is now inside and waiting for me to do what comes next: Setting and leveling, hooking up the pigtail for electrical, setting up the control PC and "initial initialization".

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Oh, and Professor Dr. SWMBO (my spouse and the majority stockholder) says I have to come up with a much better name than "yellow monster". Indeed I do.

[Jon Wolfe]

Exciting Jim!
Cant wait to see what you can make with the Yellow Monster (yeah...needs a new name)
jon

[Brad Patturelli]

Looks awesome! Love the pics, enjoy that beast.

[Bill Kelleher]

Mom, can i play over uncle Jims house!!!! He just unpacked little bumble!

Material from the crate was used to turn the pallet into a platform as the first part of getting the machine moved into my shop.

IMG_0660.jpg

The same principle applied to extending things to/through the shop door

IMG_0661.jpg

I will mention at this point that I miscalculated placement of the 2x material under the OSB ramp and, um...got to use the jack a little more than originally planned. Yup...a caster went through. I added some additional sheet stock/boards under the path and the rest of the journey was successful. The gantry "just" fit through the 6' wide double doors. Whew!

IMG_0663.jpg

And...the "Yellow Monster" is now inside and waiting for me to do what comes next: Setting and leveling, hooking up the pigtail for electrical, setting up the control PC and "initial initialization".

IMG_0664.jpg

Oh, and Professor Dr. SWMBO (my spouse and the majority stockholder) says I have to come up with a much better name than "yellow monster". Indeed I do.

[Dan Schmidt]

Jim - wow, fantastic - congratulations on the arrival. What an awesome machine, and it fits perfectly in that area of your shop!

The picture of the bee on the pallet is hilarious! Thanks for the detailed pics of how you staged the crate and rolled the machine into the shop. Very clever, and certainly helps me (and I'm sure others) plan for the big arrival.

Now the fun begins! I look forward to hearing about your experiences in setting up the electrical / computer, setting your spoil board, and initializing the machine! Again, congrats and have fun!

Dan

[Jim Becker]

Thanks, folks.

Dan, I've never been squeamish about documenting things here. It's part of how my mind seems to work it seems. After I drop my daughter off at work this morning, I'll get to the cleaning and placing and hooking upping and...maybe even finding something to complain about. LOL

I was really glad when Tia decided to help with this and not just for the extra muscles. She has a challenge thinking things through process (among other things) and it was (hopefully) instructive to her how I went through the process of how to move the machine from it's place on the pallet into the shop.

[David Falkner]

That is a huge crate! You have enough material in that alone for a couple of projects.

I see you taped off the floor where the CNC will reside. I did that, too, for the Saturn. It takes up more room than the tape did... LOL!

Can't wait to see it in place and hooked up to run.

David

[Keith Outten]

Congratulations Jim,

When my Stinger was delivered the computer was all setup. CAMaster had to install the card and WinCNC software so all I had to do was turn it on and connect the dust collection hose then go to work. They also installed the post processor for my router and it only took me about ten minutes to check out WinCNC. I already had some files to machine so a quick toolpath setup and I was machining.

I hope your initial startup goes as smooth as mine, good luck today.

[Jim Becker]

David, yes, the crate was, um...large...and yes, I'll be preserving that material for use, probably for the upstairs assembly/inventory space I intend to create for smaller items. The tape thing was so I could visualize surrounding space enough to insure I was picking the right spot. I did get the footprint nailed, but the tape never reflects the height of the tool. LOL My shop looks a whole lot smaller now.

Keith, turnkey is how they do it. I will, however, open up the computer case and reseat the cards as enough folks have reported initial problems stemming from things getting loose during the shipping process. That makes perfect sense if you think about it. I should be able to "turn things on" sometime today to verify operation, etc. I will not get to any "real" cutting until I deal with the spoil board, etc., but have material large enough for a temporary solution there.

[Lorne Horvath]

Congrats Jim! You’re going to love your yellow monster. We have had our SR-34 since November and absolutely love it.
See you next week at Mcgrews!
Lorne

[Jim Becker]

I'm looking forward to the event next week, Lorne!

[Dennis Peacock]

Congrats Mr Becker!!!!! I'm so excited for you!!

[Bruce Page]

She is a beauty! My PC resides dust free in the base table I built for my Stinger so access is umm, limited. I made sure the WinCNC card was firmly seated as soon as I unpacked it. From there on it was plug & play!

FYI, Mick Martin posted a nice spoil board surfacing program on Camheads that you can download. I haven't used it but everyone seems to like it.