Owners manuals need improvements!

[AMCjeepCJ]

Hey everybody,

I've been hearing the same theme over and over from Milltronics owners. It usually starts out: nice machine...good quality...great value...the control is excellent.....but the owners manual sucks!

I've noticed that there is a lot of information crammed in there, the problem is finding it. I bet 2/3 of the problems could be solved just by adding an index of keywords in the front, (but definitely not the back if they do add one!) Also the 'table of contents' in the beginning is ONLY useful if you pretty much already know what you are looking for AND know which sub-sub-sub-sub directory it is located in. In the off chance you don't, (which is 95% of the time that you are in the manual,) you're screwed.

I have a Mori Seiki lathe and it came with 13 manuals I think! Sound like overkill? Not when you see how well thought out and organized they are. It is VERY easy to find what you are after and once you've found it, they go out of their way to OVER SIMPLIFY things so you can fix it on your own. One word comes to mind using them. "Intuitive"

I know Milltronics has 'Application Notes' that the engineers/programmers have, so why not make these available on a CD for a small $15-$20 fee or have them as a free download on the webite OR better yet, have them in a searchable database on www.milltronics.net ?? Then the information is ALWAYS current aka 'the latest and greatest!'

I've had the 'Application Notes' emailed to me more than once on various issues. The latest being the dxf (importer / convertor, I forget?) Needless to say, the five page version seriously stomped the two paragraph version in my mill's manual.

It just seems silly to me that they have already spent ALL the money creating these reams of 'Application Notes' but because of cost, (that's all I can possibly think would keep you from doing it,) they aren't making these public!

I would be MORE than happy to buy a CD with ALL the 'Application Notes' for Cent 5 and Cent 7 software because it would pay for itself the VERY FIRST TIME I can't find the answer in my manual and have to halt a setup.

I know the guys from Milltronics read this, is there anything that can be done about this matter? Is it something that has to wait because of a budget problem? Is it something that is already being discussed and steps being taken to improve? Just curious, this forum is an excellent, not to mention FREE way to connect with a LOT of potential customers. I love my machine but there is still plenty of room for improvement, most notably in the documentation department.

Sincerely,
Carl P. Stender

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[Teps71]

I agree completely. The set of manuals that was included with the mill when sold new in 99 is for a Cent I controller. Lots of stuff doesn't jive. I'd be willing to pay for manuals on CD, especially with the application notes. The idea of PDF files on the web is better yet. It speaks volumes about a vendor/manufacturer when they share the information for their products freely on the web. One factor that could play into ROI for Milltronics to do this is less support calls.

[sdantonio]

I have yet to find a instrument or machine manufacturer of any kind who can also write a good manual.

When I sterted my current contract the first thing I had to go in the lab was to rip appart the front end on my Mass Spectrometer (an instrument to very accurately measure chemicals by their molecular weight) and give it a complete cleaning and PM chekup. So I followed the manual like a good little engineer.

Afterwards I went into my boss, knowing he was on the team that wrote the manual and said "you know this manual sucks. It tells you just enough to let you get into trouble, but not enough to get you out of it". And his responce basically was "have you ever read a good, well written manual".

I think this is problematic through the whole industry and not to just a few companies.

[single phase]

AMCjeepCJ

I just purchased a used Mori Seiki SL-00 lathe (Fanuc) and it only had one of its original manuals with it. It is a service manual for the machine. It is written very well and is very informative. Milltronics should make a manual just like it for their machines.

I am curious jeep, what is the list of manuals you got with your Mori? I have ordered the operation and programming manuals for my lathe. They are both over $300 each.

Dave

[AMCjeepCJ]

(((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

[single phase]

jeep

Thank you very very much for putting that list together for me. I have collected the first 6 on the list for my SL-00. I could not get a list of what was originally shipped with my lathe, the dealer lost the information.

What are those Yasnac LX3 manuals? I know it is the control but what is in the manuals? Is it the same stuff but more specific as what is in the programming and ops manuals?

I second what you are saying about the Milltronics application notes. They act as if they are giving away pure gold every time they let one fly out of the house! I can just hear them saying, "We spent thousands to create these application notes. We can't just give them away!" LOL


Dave

[AMCjeepCJ]

Honestly, I don't understand the Yasnac manuals because I don't program straight G code anymore. Yes, I think they just get into the control in much greater detail. I use the CAPS-L and even though it's DOS based, it's fast and powerful. If you have the first six, that is all you need I think, I don't use the others often at all.

Hey Dave, email the owner of this site and lobby for a Mori Seiki area, tell me when you do it and I'll write him too. I'd be interested in an area dedicated to our lathes...

[single phase]

Tell me about CAPS-L. How did you get it? Does Mori sell it? Will it work with any Mori lathe? Does it output g-code?


Dave

[AMCjeepCJ]

Sorry about taking three and one half years to reply Singlephase but did you ever get the CAPS-L information????