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JCDammeyer's 42 projects

Now this is cool. This was the cheapest game controller I could find and it arrived today.
1775947832798.png

Plugged it into the PC. Ran the AR4 Robot Arm software and clicked on the 'Controller ICON' to enable it. Cool. The jog buttons move the axis around. Much easier than using the mouse to hover over a button on the screen and then look at the arm and click.

I'm almost having fun...
 
Yahoo. My interface boards arrived. Downside is I have the connector pins reversed but that mistake was made with the point to point wired board. So for the 6 pin and 9 pin connectors I have to pull the pins and re-insert in the opposite order.

The prototype board had 4 pin connectors while this one includes the shield wire so they are 5 pin.
InterfaceBoard.jpg

Also discovered that right at the J3 encoder connector I had also mirrored the wires. I'm amazed that it appeared to work correctly until I tried to move it and see how many degrees I'd jogged. None. Hmmm. Run monitor encoder program. Hmmm. No J3 axis motion. After lots of tracing and swapping I suddenly noticed on a working encoder the black wire was on the opposite end. I'm amazed I didn't toast the other one.

Now working much better.
 
Yahoo. My interface boards arrived. Downside is I have the connector pins reversed but that mistake was made with the point to point wired board. So for the 6 pin and 9 pin connectors I have to pull the pins and re-insert in the opposite order.

The prototype board had 4 pin connectors while this one includes the shield wire so they are 5 pin.
View attachment 81090

Also discovered that right at the J3 encoder connector I had also mirrored the wires. I'm amazed that it appeared to work correctly until I tried to move it and see how many degrees I'd jogged. None. Hmmm. Run monitor encoder program. Hmmm. No J3 axis motion. After lots of tracing and swapping I suddenly noticed on a working encoder the black wire was on the opposite end. I'm amazed I didn't toast the other one.

Now working much better.
Here's the schematic of the board.
 

Attachments

My experience with electronics is I can't see what I've done wrong until the magic smoke comes out to signal me. Sounds like you've escaped that this time. I need more of your electronics luck.
 
Found this video on VEVOR. DIdn't know where to post the link so I'll do it here. Talks about how it was formed and why it's successful. With a bit of anti-chinese fear mongering near the end.

 
Vevor doesn't produce the tools however. Just like Harbor Freight and Princess Auto don't produce tools.
And seriously, who cares who owns the company. The ending is just laughable. The US and Israel are more likely to be spying on you.
 
It's called free enterprise/capitalism.
Exactly. Just found it a nice summary of how VEVOR was virtually unknown a while ago and is now everywhere.
Short story here:
I had finished doing some service upgrade at one of the semiconductor plants in Taiwan and was back in the hotel sitting in the lounge waiting to see if I could get a flight back to Hong Kong that night or just take the scheduled one the next day.

Sitting beside me at the bar was an engineer from one of the really big IBM PC compatible Video Graphics card companies (this was 1993). He was there to ensure that the pick&place production lines always had components. The reason was that if there was a parts shortage, and it would take longer to get those parts than it took to change the machine(s) over to a different PC board, they would do that.

If that happened then production of the video card might be stalled for weeks until that new run for some other client was done. He'd been there 6 months.

An idle machine means no income and the video reminded me of that.
 
What is kind of sad is that many want other countries to produce a product cheaper, but are not willing to make a better product for a few more dollars/yen etc. in that country or any other.
 
What is kind of sad is that many want other countries to produce a product cheaper, but are not willing to make a better product for a few more dollars/yen etc. in that country or any other.
Was there ever a time when companies offered both a domestic product and an off-shore line, so you had a choice? Or was it a straight race to make stuff as cheap as possible?

What I mean is the same company making two lines, then letting the consumer demand dictate where to continue production
 
Was there ever a time when companies offered both a domestic product and an off-shore line, so you had a choice? Or was it a straight race to make stuff as cheap as possible?

What I mean is the same company making two lines, then letting the consumer demand dictate where to continue production
When I look in the tool boxes of other people, I find the few of us who prefer to pay a little more for quality are definitely in the minority. Unfortunately this drives up the price of quality until even we can't afford it anymore. Fortunately, they're usually still very serviceable when picked up used at a fraction of the price of new.
 
Was there ever a time when companies offered both a domestic product and an off-shore line, so you had a choice? Or was it a straight race to make stuff as cheap as possible?

What I mean is the same company making two lines, then letting the consumer demand dictate where to continue production

Sure, lots of industrial products are offered as either domestic or import versions. In my world, Watts offers domestic or import butterfly valves, Ebro offers either made in Germany or made in Thailand, Crane makes commodity valves in China or specialized valves in the USA. I think it’s mostly consumer products that have gone 100% offshore, lots of industrial stuff is still made here and industrial buyers recognize the value in buying domestic-made or European-made products. If your $1M per day paper mill is heavily dependent on keeping running 24/7 it makes sense to spend the extra to get domestic stuff, even if the only quality difference between domestic and offshore is how long it will take to get repair parts if something breaks.
 
When I look in the tool boxes of other people, I find the few of us who prefer to pay a little more for quality are definitely in the minority. Unfortunately this drives up the price of quality until even we can't afford it anymore. Fortunately, they're usually still very serviceable when picked up used at a fraction of the price of new.
True.

If it was $5 for offshore and $10 for domestic, I would go domestic every time. But I guess part of my question was they no longer offer a choice, it's off shore or it's off shore.

Probably, as you pointed out, the majority of people want the $5. I was just curious how they arrived at that consumer demand decision.
 
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