State of Uptime, November 2009

I've heard a few rumors recently regarding the state of the company and thought it would be a good time to share some thoughts and facts.

First of all, even though we are in fact low on cash, we are still a healthy corporation. I've taken some steps to remedy that problem by bringing some money from home, which I resisted for quite awhile. One thing which I resisted earlier in the year was an offer by Bank of America to give us a line of credit. Initially they offered one to the corporation only, but upon reading the fine print found out that I was personally liable should the corporation default. It even mentioned that my children and their children would be liable, should the corporation default!!!

When you see shops having auctions, it was probably because they got in bed with the likes of BofA.

Anyway, as a result, we are low on cash. This is, as you can imagine, not caused by my or your incompetence, but because our customers are low on work.

Please rest assured that we plan to stay in business, and are listening to our customers and employees on how to solve the problem of too little work and cash.

In the meantime, I encourage your suggestions and encourage you to have a positive attitude around our customers. One sure way to discourage someone from buying a quarter million dollar rebuild project from us is to moan about the health of the company to them.

Hang in there :)
Warren

Beaming Power using a laser

Greg Rockwood sent me this link regarding the recent space elevator contest at Edwards AFB this week:
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_13710120


He also observed that maybe we can run servo motors without wiring someday, using this power beaming technology. Hmmm - how about a tilting rotary table riding on a VTL. We could shoot a laser at it periodically to charge the servo/controller's supercap power supply.


Stay tuned.


Warren

Early November Update

Well, here we are into November and I thought I'd mention a couple of things that our guys are doing.

-American Metal Bearing - The machine developed a bad noise in high range early this week as they were checking it out for production. Jeff had fine tuned the zero return and re-checked out the dual feedback late last week after the X ballscrew work was done by Chris and Bill, but the noisy spindle was a surprise to us. Bill went right down and discovered several problems inside the gearbox that were totally unrelated to anything we had done during the recent retrofit work. Parts should be in tomorrow and the machine could be back running with some new bearings and clutch parts early next week.

-GE Duarte - Basem did an excellent job of repairing two VCU's for them in a hurry this week. In addition, he went over and fixed some wiring problems caused by careless installation.

-Health Insurance   - Nothing is ever easy. We've been through a few glitches in getting the plans switched over and hope that the Healthnet will be in place soon, probably with back coverage from November 1. I'll keep you updated.

-NOV (Varco) - Jeff, Jon, Travis, and I were all involved it the first of what we hope are many "Real Time" machine monitoring installations there. The first one we did was a horizontal G&L. It required some custom circuitry by Jon to detect motion in Z, but it is working well now. The system is by Refresh Your Memory, and has an excellent web interface (www.rym.com).

Thanks to all of you who have made sacrifices during these tough times.

Warren


-

Tulip, Memex, and other Canadians

Regarding DNC and Machine Monitoring, our pilot project at NOV (Varco) on machine 127 is up and running. We still have a minor adjustment to make on the Z axis motion sensor, but otherwise, the wireless and mini website monitor is functioning. Hopefully, they'll buy enough for the whole facility (about 35 CNC and a few more manual machines). Please tell me or Travis of any DNC/Machine Monitor prospects.

Dilbert the Engineer - Bad as Willie Nelson's song about being a Cowboy

Couldn't resist posting this. Most of you have probably seen my Dilbert/Ham Radio cartoon on my bulletin board.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmYDgncMhXw


Also, thanks to everyone for getting their Health Net applications done so fast. By November 1, we hope to make the switch.

We're actively searching out the next retrofit - this is the first time in years that we have a gap in the schedule. For the record, we WILL still do MDSI retrofits if we are asked (we have quotes out to Accurate, Triumph Actuation, and Triumph Structures for them). We prefer to do ones by Fanuc. I just found out today how much cheaper it is to buy parts retail from GEFanuc than it is to buy a them as part of a retrofit package. The A40/4000HVis motors we used at American Metal Bearing recently cost us $1,688 each. As part of a retrofit package with our current multiplier, it would have cost $3,399. I'm not sure it has always been this bad, but it sure makes me want to look around for used, newer Fanuc CNC's to buy without motors for our retrofits.

Look for work!

Warren

Last trip of the season on Jerry's boat

Well, this is a little late, but here some of us are on Jerry's boat for the last trip of the season. It turned out to be a beautiful evening, even if it was October 9. In addition to Basem, Travis, Gilbert, Milton and Bill shown here, Jeff and Jerry were on the bridge and I took the picture. We sailed over to to Ports of Call and watched cargo get unloaded while we ate sandwiches and pie.

Thanks Jerry!

On a more current note, I'm pleased to announce the birth of George Fahmy last Thursday. There was a little mix up here at the office since at first it seemed that George wasn't ready Thursday. Congratulations to Basem and Erini.

Welcome to a new idea (for Uptime)

Welcome to our blog. I've been meaning to try something like this for quite awhile, but something Friday pushed me into it.

For several months, we've been going through the machines at GE Aviation in Duarte, adding safety switches and locks to the doors. When one showed up via UPS recently, I instructed Ryan to put it in Jeff's office since we had purchased several Euchner Safety Switches for GE and Jeff had been doing the project.

Well, as it turns out, Ron had ordered the switch for GE Aviation in Irvine and the job had accidentally been closed out. I had no idea Ron was working on safety switches. Ron had no idea we had been working on them up in the Duarte plant.

I thought, "we need to communicate better". So, here it is.