(((Benji, if you stumble across this please read the whole thing or at least the paragraphed parts...)))
Single Phase,
I have an SL-20 and it came with....let me go look:
1. Maintenance Manual I (1/2" thick bound with diagrams (220 pages?))
2. Maintenance Manual II (1/2" thick bound with diagrams (220 pages?))
3. Programming Manual (250 pages?)
4. Operation Manual (2) (1/2" thick bound with diagrams (220 pages?))
5. Parts list (75 pages?)
6. Electrical Circuit Diagram (Folder style about 2/3 as big as my owners manual for my mill (200+ pages))
7. Yasnac LX3 I (controller 150ish pages)
8. Yasnac LX3 II (controller 80ish pages)
9. Yasnac LX3 III (controller 130ish pages)
10. In Machine tool presetter operation Manual (30 pages)
(((CAPS-L conversational program)))
11. Programming examples (150ish pages)
12. Operation Manual I (150ish pages)
13. Operation Manual II (150ish pages)
14. Installation guide (30 pages)
Estimated 2,055+ pages of manuals. All were professionally bound like a paperback book except the electrical diagramming. This is overkill nowadays, a simple CD would suffice but a DECADE ago, this is how they did it...
I almost think Mori took it to the extreme, ALMOST... Thing is, we've fixed every single glitch inhouse including a crashed tool presetter with nothing more than RC car parts. Those manuals have saved us tons of cash and tons of downtime. A good example, we just moved to a new building and the riggers dropped our lathe about 2 inches, not good! it was basically cosmetic as far as damage but it knocked a roll of masking tape loose that had been inside the coolant tank (under water) for about a decade. That proceeded to plug up the whole coolant system.
All we had to do was go to our MMII and find coolant problems. It gave us step by step instructions to find, remove, fix and replace everything. Took about 2 hours to get us back online. (Our fault, we put it together backwards, oh well even the best manuals still need us monkeys to do it right.) No parts needed either! The trouble shooting tips in the Mori are worth paying a couple grand for over the life of the machine, I kid you not!
Contrast that experience to my mill a week or three ago. I blew a fuse in the chip conveyor, not a big deal except I couldn't find out which one it was without calling my service guy and asking. Now I AM NOT saying the information isn't in there, I'm just saying it's hard to find stuff. I've noticed a lot of my questions regarding my mills are in the manuals but unless your a milltronics employee, good luck finding it!
On the other hand there IS A LOT that IS NOT in the owners manual but they only put in those application notes. Honestly guys, those application notes rock, I wish we could buy them on CD or else have milltronics post them on their website, they are so straight forward.
Think about it Benji, put the application notes on your website, make it available to new machine owners for three years and then a very small fee afterwards per year and have your engineers keep the latest and greatest information current on there!! You'd be the envy of the industry!! I don't mind you guys making money off this program, not at all.
You already have all the info made, it's just a simple matter of user names and passwords, (which you currently have also, I've used them three times.) Then upload the information in some sort of searchable database. I bet you'd save thousands and thousands per year just by having your repair guys in the field being able to access info online at the customers shop without having to constantly call your engineers for support. That alone should make it worth it and with the cost savings you could just post it all for free to everyone!! I'd still be willing to pay a reasonable fee for the NEW service, just keep it affordable like your products. The more I think about it, this could be a better idea than I thought. Think about this, even your engineers/programmers would have access to it from anywhere on the planet...
Back to the Mori manual:
I think Mori did it right by having 14 seperate manuals instead of one HUGE one! My mill's is like the MSC catalog, huge but almost useless. (except MSC you can find stuff five different ways.) My Mori manuals LITERALLY have ten times the info, in an easier to understand format, with lots of diagrams, trouble shooting guides, crossreferencing and crazy good indexing. They may be the best of the best in the manual department but for the price of a CD, why doesn't everyone have that type of quality? The info exists at milltronics already, (not to pick on them but these are the only two companies I deal with first hand,) so get it to the people who need it, namely.......me
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