13/11/2025
This is typically how most medical components land on my work bench…..in multiple pieces. This one off job is some sort of surgical instrument that has this plastic gearbox labyrinth that connects it all together. It has cover plates, bearing portals, axle location, mounting flanges, etc. all in one very compact yet fragile part. I copied it as best I could from the damaged unit. Machined from black acetal. The interesting part is that none of this job was done using the machine’s own conversational programming system, nor was any cad/cam system. The Hicell does have very limited conversational capability but not pocket milling. That wasn’t even thought of in 1993, so I find it easing to write the code by hand. I did it the fastest way I know, the old way. Pen, paper, vernier, calculator and AI……That’s ACTUAL INTELLIGENCE, not that new fangled bu****it algorithm software disguised as something it is not. The entire code was hand typed in my old text editor using MS-DOS 6.2, old trusty never fails me. No updates, no bugs, no glitches, no waiting to load, no log ins. It just works simply, as it should. CNC G code is very simple if you know what you want to do, it only gets complicated if you let it. The only modern part of this process is using a PC instead of blue punch tape (shudder), I do not miss that life, one mistake with my fat digit typing single characters and you start the entire program again. This job worked out well and will get the customer out of trouble and back in surgery faster than they expected.
