2019cnc4-5

28 www.CNC-West.com CNC WEST April/May 2019 The gyroscope project is a right of passage at the UC Davis College of Engineering. The mechanical engineering students make a gyroscope in their ten week class. It has to stand on its point for 2 minutes to pass the class. They just got done with 88 students running the competition for this quarter. The top time was just over seven minutes. Students are introduced to manual machining processes. So drill press for the holes, manual lathe for the spindle and so forth. They see the numbers go by and see the table move. That starts imprinting the process in their mind. So when they begin to use the ACU-RITE controller is isn’t just punching a button, it is punching the button and knowing that the button makes the machine do a specific task that they already have done manually. The UC Davis College of Engineering ESDC began uti- lizing ACU-RITE controllers back in the early 2000’s and just recently invested in an upgraded version. Last school year they added four new Bridgeport mills to the shop and equipped them with the ACU-RITE G2 controller. They took that opportunity to upgrade all the controllers on all the mills. When it came time to invest in new controllers they looked no further than Dave McCarthy at Heiden- hain Corp. “We love Dave,” touts Mike. “His support of our program is amazing and product support is even bet- ter. We upgraded all the Bridgeport controls to the ACU- RITE G2 and couldn’t be happier with them. We had other controls in the past, but the ease of use and durability we get with ACU-RITE is fantastic. As you can imagine with the number of students we get in this program they see a lot of use and inadvertently a lot of abuse. We don’t worry too much because Dave makes sure we get great service and pricing on any replacement parts. The G2 controllers are a big bump in technology for us. The previous ACU- RITE version we were using still had floppy disk drives. Now we have USB. Our codes are not super complex, but even still we would run across a student not understand- ing why they couldn’t save their program. You start do- ing 3D modeling in Fusion 360 and there is never enough space on the floppy. Dave is one of the good guys in the business. He drops by whenever he is in the area and takes a real interest in the students and our program.” The staff and shop techs all praised the ACU-RITE controlled machines as a great way to go from manual to CNC and back to manual as needed. All the teaching pro- grams revolve around doing a manual element followed by a CNC element. Different projects for different majors, but the core concept of learning is the same. Here is the manual way, turn the crank and watch it move. Now pro- gram it to turn the crank for you. “You think about all the years they spent getting to this point in their education,” concludes Mike. “They struggled though the pressures of school and taking only upper division classes to get into a good college, but they never took a shop class. The ESDC adds an element they’ve never known before. They take those senses you feel manually machining a part and transfer it into CNC experience. It isn’t just a video game; they pick up a road feel that you only get by actually driv- ing the machine. That experience translates directly to the next step in their journey.”