"Wild_Bill" wrote in message
...
I've seen a couple of HSM High Speed Machining websites (not home shop
metalworker/machinist), and the speeds were up in the range of, or even
higher than high speed production wood routing.

It's amazing to me that heavy duty spindles can be so precisely balanced
and made to such close tolerances to operate in those speed ranges, and
that the machines are responsive enough to move that fast in any position
with very high and repeatable accuracy.

Yeah. I've seen some turn at 50,000 rpm, and I'm not talking about dental
drills. These things were turning special shell mills with 50 hp, tearing
into aircraft wing skins and throwing enough chips to bury a man in about a
minute. That's not an exageration.

There are a couple of people here who really know about balancing, in a
serious, professional way. If you ever want to know about it you'll get some
good answers here.


Think what you like, Ed, and it's nice to be optimistic, but most times
that I've assumed that folks have the capability to understand/comprehend
or accept explanations, the results have generally been disappointing.

Ha! Well, I wrote over 350 articles for several metalworking magazines, with
circulation of 80,000 - 100,000, and I always felt that if 100 of them found
it interesting or useful, I should be happy. g


I believe that there are many more folks than one would generally imagine,
that will respond positively to an explanation just out of courtesy or
just hoping to get off the subject sooner, while silently dismissing
everything that was said/offered.

I've found that for a lot of people, unless the topic was about their
favorite celebrity, sports team etc, they're more likely to be thinking..
uh-oh, knowlege/information, get that **** away from me.

Well, maybe we're all guilty of that sometimes. I don't let it bother me. I
quickly found out, when I started to write, that not everyone in
manufacturing read my articles or would have cared about the subjects,
anyway. That line of work is a lot more pleasant and less frustrating if you
just let the readers decide what they want and not try to push it on them. I
just tried to find out what mattered to people and focused on that.
Eventually, after 10 or so years of doing it, I had a good sense of what
they'd care about and I could introduce some things they didn't know they'd
be interested in until they saw it.

Now, writing ad copy is something else. I used to sweat bullets waiting for
the Readex scores on my ads, and I was ****ed if my ad wasn't the
"best-read" in a given issue. That line of work can tear your heart out.

--
Ed Huntress