Due to a lot of the responses I was getting from people and the full knowledge that we have always been a bit unique both the manufacturing industry and the Apple community, I figured I was confusing quite a few people. You are in good company. It occurred to me that posting a bunch of pics with some short explanations would probably do more to clear things up than trying to post a very long detailed text explanation. It seems that was a very good idea, because this community appears to be really excited about what we're doing, and I've had members respond OH, now I get it!
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Corroded Chip
- Thread starter Iamanamma
- Start date
A picture is worth a thousand words IRL for most folks, but in your case that increases by an order of magnitude. Is that Hardi Panel sheet covering that booth?
I come from the world of late 80s - early 2,000s use of dongled software and proprietary interface cards for CAD-CAM in signmaking. I'm more interested in the fact that you're still buying production equipment for that production environment! I take it your production software was never made PowerPC compatible? If it had been, I'd suggest looking first gen NuBus PPC machines for future use. Rock on!
edit: second thought, BMOW has developed the USB Wombat for converting modern KBDs to ADB for your Macs. Buy a few of those and replace the ADB KBDs with current boards hardened for industrial use or far less expensive consumer KBDs for which you can stockpile clear vinyl(?) KBD protectors to seal out the oil, grime and dust.
I come from the world of late 80s - early 2,000s use of dongled software and proprietary interface cards for CAD-CAM in signmaking. I'm more interested in the fact that you're still buying production equipment for that production environment! I take it your production software was never made PowerPC compatible? If it had been, I'd suggest looking first gen NuBus PPC machines for future use. Rock on!
edit: second thought, BMOW has developed the USB Wombat for converting modern KBDs to ADB for your Macs. Buy a few of those and replace the ADB KBDs with current boards hardened for industrial use or far less expensive consumer KBDs for which you can stockpile clear vinyl(?) KBD protectors to seal out the oil, grime and dust.
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It almost looks like that AEK does have a clear cover over it.(like, the area between the F12 and F13 key)
Or just a nice thick layer of grase/warped plastic from over the years
(no to say having a backup plan is a bad idea or anything)
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Looked at the pic full size and I think you're right about the KBD protector.
Nobody's mentioned running the boards through a dishwasher (no soap) for cleaning. Your computer preservation budget should probably include a sonic cleaner tank made specifically for the task, if not I'd buy a beat up used dishwasher dedicated to cleaning that kind of industrial crud! :approve:
Nope, it's only compatible through OS 7.1, and was never made for any PPC. There is a NuBus Comm card inside the IIci/IIsi that connects to a motion board inside the console. We were told we couldn't update the Mac to a newer model due to the way the comm card and the motion board communicate to the servos on the machine. Strippit did make a model that was compatible with a Quadra 650, but that machine came with different servos, therefor a different communication card that wasn't compatible with the servos on our machines.
That is an excellent tip. Finding KB skins for the old keyboards is extremely difficult, and we wear right through them anyway. It is much easier to get skins for USB keyboards.
Yes it most certainly does. The guys have worn right through the vinyl in spots. What you see isn't really grease. it's grit and oil. Welding and grinding are dirty jobs, and even though the welding stations are a in a different part of the shop, the grit gets everywhere. We use a lot of pickled and oiled mild steel, and the oil gets all over everything as well.
Everything you see in the pics is sheet metal, mostly stainless and Hot-rolled Pickled and Oiled steel. There is a little copper medallion as well. The big booth is just a lot of steel panels welded together.
Since I didn't know what hardi panel was, I went and looked it up. No, we don't use that at all. All of the paneling on the Strippit machines and their consoles is fiberglass.
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Wow this is neat. Our CNC machine isnt quite as old, but its still fairly old by todays standards. it uses a Pentium 166 with QNX, and a software package called Precix, and I have to do similar things to keep it running. I just got done rebuilding the servo amplifier not too long ago as the capacitors had started leaking and kept getting Z axis errors.
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A couple of years ago we started getting all kinds of crazy referencing errors and discovered the bulging capacitors in our Macs. We found a guy in Michigan who does recaps for a living. One by one we sent our on duty Macs and our spares to him. He cleaned the boards, recapped them. and tested them, and only found one he couldn't completely repair. He was a life saver!
Aha! That's for shop use, I thought it was for a customer and you were putting Hardi Plank or vinyl siding over it.
I'm glad you liked the USB/skins suggestion, have at it, it'll probably save you money over the long haul just on the price of skins. How many consoles are you running? If ambient temperatures + shop temps are too high for the production machines, I'd think about putting an addition on the console for one of those cute little Pinguino room air conditioners and a big multi-layer house filter system to add to what's built into the console. You wouldn't need to run the A.C. all that much. ISTR they're really efficient if you add water rather than having them depend on just the moisture they collect in operation.
So much cool stuff! I so miss my full set of Whitney cold iron working tools and the brakes for sheet metal fab. :mellow:
We are running 3 consoles, and we have installed chillers on all three to help keep the temperatures down. I am hot sure where we would fit any extra filters.
