Last year, I made a plan to start buying and reviewing US-made products off Amazon. I was going to post the reviews to my personal blog and "practice what I preach" as a US manufacturing advocate. To get started I was able to find some camouflage cloth tape for a Halloween project somewhat by chance. I was then starting to look for other practical things and I really struggled … [Read more...]
CIMCO MDC Web Client Preview (Video)
Back on May 6th we introduced you to some clean concept images of the upcoming MDC-Max Web Client. The images were pretty stunning, so it was easy to imagine that the actual interface may not quite live up to them. I was recently given the opportunity to install the current build of the client and wow did it not disappoint. Oddly as much as I love how it looks, I was more … [Read more...]
How to Drip Feed using CIMCO DNC-Max or Edit
When Drip Feeding is Necessary Most new CNC controls are now Ethernet capable and support Windows networking for file transfer and offer plenty of room for storage. There are, however, a huge number of perfectly functional CNC machines out there with older controls that support only RS-232 for file transmission. We also see a number of machines where the company orders them … [Read more...]
The Plea for SSD
2025 Update: In 2025 solid-state storage has cemented its dominance: PCIe 5.0 NVMe drives such as Crucial’s T705 now exceed 14 GB/s sequential reads, mainstream 4 TB models hover around six cents per gigabyte, and even 8 TB sticks can be found for under $600, bringing SSD prices within striking distance of hard-disk territory for most workloads. Meanwhile, HDD makers are … [Read more...]
Using Active Directory with CIMCO MDC
System administrators really despise redundant work. A lot of what a quality IT department does is automate and integrate systems to require less input from a user to perform their job function. Imagine maintaining 2, 3, or even 4 different sets of user accounts and passwords. Or worse, imagine not having a user experience be unique because the overhead to maintain it is too … [Read more...]
San Joaquin Valley Manufacturing Alliance EP9
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. -John Quincy Adams There is something extraordinary going on in the San Joaquin Valley. Economic development, education, and business interests have gotten together to form the San Joaquin Valley Manufacturing Alliance. Their upcoming manufacturing summit has already been … [Read more...]
Adding Local Language Translation to CIMCO MDC
CIMCO software provides language localization for close to two dozen languages for all of their products. There is one area that just having a translation is not enough. Machine Data Collection is almost a living organism, we add new downtime reasons and data points based on our unique needs, equipment and internal benchmarks. So when you are collecting data from multiple … [Read more...]
Rising Tide for San Joaquin Valley Manufacturers
As some of you already know, I moved from the Bay Area to El Dorado Hills in 2014. As a relative newbie to the greater Sacramento area, I connected with the Sacramento Valley SME to get involved with other folks interested in precision manufacturing. That connection ultimately led to the creation of this podcast with a little inspiration from Bill Gaines. Recently, when Jeff … [Read more...]
Quick Tip: Adding new File Types to CIMCO Editor
Recently, I had a customer contact me about an issue they were having with files with the extension .eia and CIMCO Editor. Their CAM software was outputting the file as .eia but CIMCO Editor was saving it with a .nc extension tacked on the end. It's actually very easy to add additional formats to CIMCO Editor, including .eia or anything else, so that you can retain the file … [Read more...]
Big Changes Coming to CIMCO MDC Web Client
Since 2006, I cannot recall a more exciting time as a CIMCO Software re-seller. Version 8 of CIMCO Software is out, vastly improved, proven and stable, including numerous new features and a modernized interface. Machine Simulation is in the works for CIMCO Editor. Finally today I am pleased to share that the greatly enhanced CIMCO Machine Data Collection software, MDC-Max, is … [Read more...]