Hello Przemek, yeah, you are right. The world is changing to more commerce, less character rapidly. I think this started when the iron curtain fell - strangely enough, the communist system seems to have been the last part on manhood to keep up ethics and moral standards. I'm not going for more and more money since I have been lying on that cool stainless steel plate in the hospital several times, watching tmy heart impulses dwindle away on the monitor and awaiting the narcotics syringe and not knowing what I would be seening next - the world I was used to or St. Peter. This was OT.
Of course, Linux is in every screwdriver nowadays, but not visible to the user or customer, i.e., without a UI. It does its work as a stable operating system without failure. So don't get me wrong, I was using Unix on work stations as an OS long before the first PC was sold ( I used to be very familiar with it but all this was overrridden by the daily office use of Windows products). I learned that with a complicated system (CATIA) in production, you have to have a reliable software partner, beginning with system installation and update work and ending with emergency calls. If there were software houses offering this service I think LinuxCNC had a big chance on the market. But we have been discussing this commercial aspect a while ago in this mail group. It also means that there would have to be a rigid publication management for releases and their timing. This all would completely destroy what I like with LinuxCNC. Of what I heard, Ubuntu, being the base of it, is already turning more commercial at this time so we can just wait until we need another OS - just what I meant by "reliabilty and continuity". You see, I had a Siemens Facility Management system running in my company for more than 25 years with no trouble other than occasional errors or part failures. Even the central hard disk was junked later on without ever having failed during all those years. They even kept up the ancient OS (BS 1000, the predecessor of BS 2000) although nobody in the world knew about it any more - they taught their personell only for us and for the Moscow airport, the only customers left I knew of. That's continuity! In the end we switched to another system, much more user friendly, and I can only hope that the company that is selling the new system will keep on going for a long time. Of course there is a used machinery market in Germany. But for one, there is the tax aspect: you can detract more from your tax if you buy more expensive machines. This is dealt this way by the federal government in order to encourage investments in new equipment. Then, new machines are better, have less failures and out times, need less maintenance and service, are more user friendly, need fewer operators and can be run by less experienced operators. Thus, they are cheaper to run. So, the used machine market is a low price market. This way it was easy for me to buy machinery for my hobby workshop from my allowance money :-)). For the mechanical workshop of my former company, of course, I bought a 5-axis Deckel-Gildemeister CNC mill with all the tricks of the trade. It has a shrink tool holder with modern tools and works so unbelievably fast that everyone expects the tools to break or at least to become dull after a few seconds. The spindle turns up to 20 000 rpm in stainless steel, so all the experienced workers shook their heads when they saw this for the first time. But aside from the speed, the programming feature enables the designers to devise parts which were not even thinkable before, e.g. a cell sieve with 500 by 500 holes of 0.3 mm diameter made from stainless steel. When the iron curtain fell, all the used machine dealers in West Germany had filled their storage with used machines, partly real wrecks, expecting the easterners to buy all this junk when the border was opened, and hoping for a great profit. However, East Germany got support from the federal government (i.e., our tax money) and used the chance to make a completely new beginning, investing only in brand new machines, so in the end it came out that they were better equipped than West Germany after all (which is also true with the roads over there compared with ours). At the dealers, they had stacked lathes and mills on top of each other - in fact, I picked my machine sitting in a cradle hovering on the crane high above a huge heap of used lathes. I used the chance and bought my lathe really cheap this way. Many dealers went bancrupt at this time, just as mine did. When I came back to his place after about half a year in search of more change gear wheels for the lathe even the building was gone. So, I had to make my own gears using my home brew software on my home brew CNC mill. This is what inspired me later to take up dealing with LinuxCNC. Anyway, to answer your question: retrofitting machines is good for home and hobby use, not on an industrial base. Don't get me wrong, I'm very in favour of repairing things (which I am doing constantly aroud the house). I have been visiting a lot of used dealers, junk yards and flea markets (and also Ebay) to complete my shop equipment. At any rate, with a shop full of old equipment you won't win many public calls for tender (or what may be the correct term for that), because in many cases the shops inventory will be considered for the decision who gets the contract. I once had a case that an engeneering company got a million order because they had a color DIN A3 laser printer while others didn't. I think that the US government would do a good thing encouraging its country's infrastructure to be improved, which is also true with electrical, water and other energy supply, as well as traffic and renewable energy systems. Squeezing the last drops of oil out of the some greasy rocks under ground is the wrong way to compete with future's demands. Peter Przemek Klosowski schrieb: > Peter, > I have nothing but respect for German reliability---but I live in the US > which may have originated the 'fail fast' attitude that, on the whole, is > quite successful. I was raised in the cultural meme of a failed businessman > who would shoot himself in the head out of shame, so it was an eye opener > for me to learn that an average successful entrepreneur in the US failed > and went bankrupt several times before achieving success. We probably pay > for that with less stable economy---when it's cranking it's really > productive, but it's susceptible to bubbles and subsequent recessions. > > I think the times are changing and for better or worse the 'fail fast' > model is gaining popularity around the world. Specifically about Linux, > when I look around me I see that all my phones, my cable modem, half of my > computers, and even my TV and DVD player all run Linux. It's an interesting > dynamic---of course all those manufacturers care about stability and > quality, so I imagine that they have internal teams that assure that it > will work out. There's nothing that would prevent a large industrial > equipment manufacturer from doing the same to adopt LinuxCNC. I think it's > bound to happen when the price pressures arise and force people to look at > the component costs---I noticed we have Chinese participants on this list, > who sounded like they are more than hobbyists. > > As an aside, is there a market for second-hand machinery in Germany? a lot > of the motivation for LinuxCNC is because people get depreciated machines > from original owners, and they are either broken, or too expensive to > maintain in the original configuration, so LCNC retrofit makes a lot of > sense. I can see how this might be not a thing to do in Germany--would you > agree? > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. 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