[Seth Emery]

I do not know the final results of the “Do you leave your CNC on overnite?” survey, but I did see that there were some people who leave theirs on, and I am curious as to why. We have always turned ours off, at least since I’ve been working for H.H. Ross. I imagine one reason is that it takes less power to power the machine back up than it does to leave it on, although I haven’t done any studies on this, so maybe it is not true. Another reason that we turn the CNC off is that it is hooked up to the network, and when the network is backed up at night, the backup doesn’t work correctly on any specific computer that is not turned off. The only reasons that I can think of to leave it on would be because someone figured out that it does take less power to leave it on than to start it back up, not wanting to take the time, and/or that you are worried about the battery going dead that powers the parameter backup module.

Have a nice evening,
Seth

[Steve Lefebvre]

I used to leave one of my CNCs running at night, but only when it was running lond production programs. I stopped doing this after a lightning storm blew out one of the contactors on another machine. Most of my CNCs also have hydralic pumps that run constantly. Cheaper for me to turn them off.

[John Cristina]

I have a good friend of mine that develops computer programs as well as hardware and he always tells me that machines that have computer components need to rest. He tells me that by shutting them down and even disconnecting the air to them will make them last longer. I have never heard anything different plus given his background, ours is always shut down at night.

John

[Andy Graves]

Sorry I changed the survey. Nobody had checked the survey in a few days so I changed it to the beltsander one.

I understand that people leave it on all the time so they don’t have to reset the machine in the morning. Once calibrated, it is ready to cut all the time. My setup takes about 5 minutes and only a couple people can perform the setup. It would be nice to leave it on, but I don’t. I am nervous that something will happen while I am away.

Andy

[John Cristina]

What do you have to set up? I am only familiar with mine, we just fire it up like your computer in the office, bring up the program to run and start making dust. Do you have to reset tooling like touching them off?

John

[Andy Graves]

I have to set the X, Y and Z axis and then set the spoilboard hieght. Then I set the home position run a warmup and I am ready. Takes about 5 minutes.

Andy

[Steve Lefebvre]

When I home the Andi all I do is push the -X and -Y buttons to get them off of the switch, then hit the + direction to home them. Same with the Z and C axis. My only gripe is that I have to hold my finger on the button until it is finished homing. On the metal working machines I just push the – direction button and the machine does the rest. I always send the machine home before I shut it down too.(G91 G28 X0 Y0 Z0;) I load a program called warmup that gradually brings the spindle up to 18,000 rpm over about 15 min. This program also moves the machine in the full X and Y directions to make sure that the guides and ballscrews get a bit of lube on them.

[Jon Olson]

What’s cheaper taking 5 minutes to set up or paying those crooks we call the utilities?

[Andy Graves]

Jon,

The only thing really “ON” is the fan for the computer cabinet. I am not sure it would take much energy, although mayber it does.

Andy

[Mory Ludwick]

Well, looks like I am the only one leaving the machine on. We have been doing it for a few years and no problems, but we will start shutting it off every night. The only reason we leave it on is that extra 5 minutes warm-up time in the morning is one extra countertop cut. We don’t have any time to spare, we try to utilize every minute of the day.[EMO]bigsmile.gif[/EMO]

Mory

[Seth Emery]

Thanks for the responses everyone. We even turn ours off when we get a bad storm, since, like Steve L., we had an expensive part of the machine’s power system fried during a thunderstorm. I didn’t think of running long programs as a reason to leave it on, but that makes sense. I saw an episode of Monster Garage once where Jesse James left his CNC mill run all night to machine a custom rim. These machines are awesome and it’s great that we have tolerances that are fairly loose but can be held easily with CNC’s.

Mory,

Don’t you even have to warm up the spindle in the morning? I just figured that warming up the spindle had to do with the spindle not running – not whether the power is turned on or not.

Have a good evening everyone,

Seth

[Mory Ludwick]

Seth,

Yes, every morning we do warm up the spindle. I don’t know why we have never shut it off. Never thought much about it. We don’t shut down our computers or turn our server off either. We have routine maintenance for our computers once a month. Our IT guy takes care of that. Of course, all our computers have battery back-up and automatic shut down if the power goes off for too long. I think its about two hours. We have surge protectors on the power coming into the building. Don’t know anything about it, the power district does all of that. However, we will start shutting down the CNC.

Mory

[Seth Emery]

Mory,

Do you not backup your network, or is your server able to do that without the network computers being turned off? Something I’ve heard about not shutting your PC’s down – some programs suck up a lot of RAM and don’t neccessarily release it once you close the program, so, until you restart your PC, that RAM is not available. Doesn’t sound like your having any problems though, so maybe you have plenty of RAM to handle this. I sometimes let my home desktop on for days at a time, but usually end up restarting it once the cursor arrow starts disappearing then reappearing or my music starts to get jittery.

Andy,

I was wondering how you set up your X and Y origins. Are you using an edge finder, or do you have some other way of doing this? Maybe a laser pointer? I learned on metalworking CNC’s, and we always had to use an edge finder to get our X and Y origins. It’s something good to know.

Seth

[Mory Ludwick]

Seth,

I have a very good friend that has his own computer business. Everything backs up automatically in two locations. Every morning when I come in we have an external drive that everything backs up to. I unplug one set and replace it with another. It overwrites each day. This way I have the entire business with me should something happen. It also uploads to an offsite data base. I don’t know alot about how it works. I would have to have you talk to him. I do know one thing, when I click on an icon it better get me where I am going really quick. I don’t have the patience to wait around for an hour. He has done a very good job on our network. We don’t have any problems at all when it comes to our computer system. He has made it really clear that I am not to touch anything outside of the programs we use. I am to call if there are problems and he will fix it. He always has.

Mory

[Jon Olson]

Ben Franklin once said “Take care of the pennies and the Dollars will come”

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