cycollins
03-20-2007, 04:17 AM
I'm currently in the midst of two simultaneous trouble-shooting issues (a persistent close-cover warning and a z-axis stall - the stall might be resolved, but I can't get the close-cover warning to go away so I can find out). I've scanned the forum and found MANY people with the close-cover problem. In some cases the problem appears to be software related. People have reported that reformatting their memory module was sufficient to clear the problem while others say that the upgrade to 1.2 caused it. In other cases, the close-cover bug appears to be an old-fashioned hardware glitch, which was my first assumption. Users report that resetting the door sensor cable connector or (and this one gives me the creeps) pulling a gray ribbon cable associated with the scan probe will clear this up. Still others say that mechanically monkeying around with the micro switches that compose the hinge sensors will do the trick. There is a similar spectrum of problems/solutions posted for all kinds of axis stalls, board sensor failures, depth craziness, postion drift, margin fraying, etc. etc.
You see the problem. My bug and/or solution could be any one of these or one that I missed amid the jumble of posts or a completely new one. I can (and probably will) try one or more of them in addition to bothering the support folks at CW, but I'd like to have some confidence that I've covered all the bases. There's a staggering amount of wisdom out there about the machine, but it isn't organized very well. Hence my suggestion: we (the users of the forum) should put together a trouble-shooting index - a database of solutions indexed by symptom. The idea would be for some collection of volunteers (presumably the moderators and some wise-guys like me who open their mouths to make suggestions like these) to scour the existing forum entries, finding problems and sorting the solutions into collections by the particular symptom. But that's only half the trick. The other half is to normalize the solutions; that is, to describe each one as a series of steps, with reference to some common diagrams with labled parts. I mean no offence to the contributers, but there is a fair amount of "yank on the thing to the left of the flange around the back of the franistat". It would be great if the CW manual had an exploded view of the unit with callouts, but common sense says that such a thing would be too complex to read. However, there could be a map to the user-servicable parts beyond the z-truck and beneath the black top-cover. If CW doesn't have diagrams we could use, it would be a simple enough matter to devise such a map from a series of photographs with arrows and labels. That way, each procedure could reference a common machine layout and part labeling scheme.
So imagine my (and others') close-door warning bug in such a format. There are a finite number of symptoms, but I search the index to find a close-door problem (did I mention the index should be searchable?). I find, say, five procedures, clearly delineated with reference to common diagrams. I follow them all. No luck. I call support. I can now tell the guy at support what I did by reference to the index. The support guys say they'd like to spend more time on the forum and the index (as a forum-supported resource) would be the most time-effective way of doing that. In fact, one would hope that more than half the entries in it were contributed by the support folks themselves. After talking for a while on the support call, we try a few things and come up with a new solution that does the trick. I can then go and update the index (did I mention it should be user-updatable?) with a new procedure and the next guy to have a close-door warning will have six procedures to try before calling support. Newbies to the forum could be directed to the index to avoid constant repetition and duplication of solutions (a problem called out by the moderators). The interactive portion of the forum would still be useful for debating procedures or devising new ones collectively, but the discussions would be cleaner by referencing the common index.
Some of the senior forum folks have suggested that whiners (such as myself on occasion) either put up or shut up. The idea is that this equipment is not for the feint-of-heart and that one should step up to the challenge of ownership and master the thing. Fair enough. I'm game. But in order to do that, I think there should be a better resource than the manual (sufficient to get one up and going, but not really useful beyond box-opening day) and the collected lore of the discussion forum to make that possible.
So what am I really proposing? I'm offering to collaborate with any willing group of forum users (hopefully a knowledgeable cross-section) to get such an index off the ground. Since my CarveWright skills are nothing to brag about, I'd be happy to do some of the heavy lifting as far as collating the data and publishing it. One medium for doing this springs to mind pretty quickly - Wikipedia. It's hosted, user-editable, searchable, hypertexted and includes image and other support media. Maybe another way might be a collectively-maintained PDF document (like the top-hatch removal document), which has many of the same properties along with annotation and change-control. By an odd co-incidence, I happen to work for Adobe in the Acrobat group, so I have access to a lot of resources along those lines.
So what say you, forum-dwellers? Anyone game to try to make all this collective wisdom really useful? If you have good ideas about how to execute on this plan or if you're just interested, post to this thread. If a core group of enthusiasts emerges, we can continue to collaborate by private messages and/or e-mail. Or if you think I should switch to a decaffeinated brand and go back to scouring the forum for hard-to-find veins of gold, you can post that too. Just looking for ways to lift eachother up by our collective boot-straps.
Thanks,
cycollins
You see the problem. My bug and/or solution could be any one of these or one that I missed amid the jumble of posts or a completely new one. I can (and probably will) try one or more of them in addition to bothering the support folks at CW, but I'd like to have some confidence that I've covered all the bases. There's a staggering amount of wisdom out there about the machine, but it isn't organized very well. Hence my suggestion: we (the users of the forum) should put together a trouble-shooting index - a database of solutions indexed by symptom. The idea would be for some collection of volunteers (presumably the moderators and some wise-guys like me who open their mouths to make suggestions like these) to scour the existing forum entries, finding problems and sorting the solutions into collections by the particular symptom. But that's only half the trick. The other half is to normalize the solutions; that is, to describe each one as a series of steps, with reference to some common diagrams with labled parts. I mean no offence to the contributers, but there is a fair amount of "yank on the thing to the left of the flange around the back of the franistat". It would be great if the CW manual had an exploded view of the unit with callouts, but common sense says that such a thing would be too complex to read. However, there could be a map to the user-servicable parts beyond the z-truck and beneath the black top-cover. If CW doesn't have diagrams we could use, it would be a simple enough matter to devise such a map from a series of photographs with arrows and labels. That way, each procedure could reference a common machine layout and part labeling scheme.
So imagine my (and others') close-door warning bug in such a format. There are a finite number of symptoms, but I search the index to find a close-door problem (did I mention the index should be searchable?). I find, say, five procedures, clearly delineated with reference to common diagrams. I follow them all. No luck. I call support. I can now tell the guy at support what I did by reference to the index. The support guys say they'd like to spend more time on the forum and the index (as a forum-supported resource) would be the most time-effective way of doing that. In fact, one would hope that more than half the entries in it were contributed by the support folks themselves. After talking for a while on the support call, we try a few things and come up with a new solution that does the trick. I can then go and update the index (did I mention it should be user-updatable?) with a new procedure and the next guy to have a close-door warning will have six procedures to try before calling support. Newbies to the forum could be directed to the index to avoid constant repetition and duplication of solutions (a problem called out by the moderators). The interactive portion of the forum would still be useful for debating procedures or devising new ones collectively, but the discussions would be cleaner by referencing the common index.
Some of the senior forum folks have suggested that whiners (such as myself on occasion) either put up or shut up. The idea is that this equipment is not for the feint-of-heart and that one should step up to the challenge of ownership and master the thing. Fair enough. I'm game. But in order to do that, I think there should be a better resource than the manual (sufficient to get one up and going, but not really useful beyond box-opening day) and the collected lore of the discussion forum to make that possible.
So what am I really proposing? I'm offering to collaborate with any willing group of forum users (hopefully a knowledgeable cross-section) to get such an index off the ground. Since my CarveWright skills are nothing to brag about, I'd be happy to do some of the heavy lifting as far as collating the data and publishing it. One medium for doing this springs to mind pretty quickly - Wikipedia. It's hosted, user-editable, searchable, hypertexted and includes image and other support media. Maybe another way might be a collectively-maintained PDF document (like the top-hatch removal document), which has many of the same properties along with annotation and change-control. By an odd co-incidence, I happen to work for Adobe in the Acrobat group, so I have access to a lot of resources along those lines.
So what say you, forum-dwellers? Anyone game to try to make all this collective wisdom really useful? If you have good ideas about how to execute on this plan or if you're just interested, post to this thread. If a core group of enthusiasts emerges, we can continue to collaborate by private messages and/or e-mail. Or if you think I should switch to a decaffeinated brand and go back to scouring the forum for hard-to-find veins of gold, you can post that too. Just looking for ways to lift eachother up by our collective boot-straps.
Thanks,
cycollins