Been a productive couple weeks, we were working on the 3 axis Bridgeport EZ-Trak, problem was the switching from 3 axis mode to either 2 axis or full manual mode left the Z axis with no digital read out, made no sense as it worked fine with 3 axis mode. Of course we weren't thinking outside the box, the motor that ran the Z axis was using an encoder to get reading and only once you switched to 2 axis or manual mode did the glass scale do anything. Once we figured that out, we used another scale to test it and it did work, then we took apart the original scale and found that it was just installed incorrectly. Fixed that and boom everything worked like expected. At this point we had to reinstall everything in a permanent fashion, once it was back together, now the computer would not switch to 2 axis or manual mode no matter what we tried to do. After a few hours of doing essentially the same thing over and over I decided to get some help. Enlisted a paid tech )over the phone) to walk through things and after an hour we got it sorted. I am not sure we would have ever figured it out, plus I am not sure why it was ever able to swap between 3 axis and 2 axis before, it had to see a full 4.5" of down travel on the Z axis before it would unlock the software portion of things, we were getting 4.48495. Adjust the top travel stop and it was moving 4.9996 and the computer was ok with that. It was a $280 tech support session, but I do have another hour to use, I am sure that will be handy when we get to dealing with the other one (2 axis only).
After that we were feeling brave and dove back into the Matsuura, had to figure out how to reset the password, in the process it turned out that we had set the password to nothing, completely blank, just hit enter. Go figure, at least we could get into the admin mode now. We neatened up some wiring, replaced a crappy monitor that had issues with the screen scrambling randomly, then started trying to figure out the VFD and spindle wiring. I think we have it sorted and next week we are going to attempt to get that part wired up and integrated directly. The tougher part is going to be two things, I have to figure out the specs on the spindle and the "resolver" (not encoder), I may not be able to use it as is, it may need to be reworked. The umbrella tool changer is going to need to know where the spindle is in order to function properly, so figuring out the spindle is actually pretty major. I figure we will at least be able to try things out by this spring, it might only be with one tool or with manual tooling swaps, but I think it will make chips. Kind of excited about learning more about it, I enjoy when my hard work starts to actually feel like it was worth it.
ice! Everywhere that was flat snowpack is now a sheet of pure ice, and with a nice skiff of snow on top is now incredibly slick. I've already wiped out once, and almost a couple more times. Trying to blow snow is a real treat because as soon as the tractor gets any resistance it just starts spinning on the ice. And it doesn't look like I'm going to get the weather to apply salt until maybe Saturday. 
