When I arrived at the registration desk at Tormach, in addition to getting a name tag with my two machines serial numbers and an embroidered "machine owner" baseball cap, I was presented with an organized list of events that would be taking place from 10:00am to 3:45pm. There were one hour time slots that had multiple options for different workshops in various parts of the building. For the first session, I attended the Introduction to Tooling and Workholding for the 15L Slant-PRO CNC lathe session. I have been following the development of this new Tormach product, so this was my first chance to see the lathe in person rather than by watching one of Tormach's expert quality videos that they release on their Tormach video library. Mike Corliss (who I recognized from several of the Tormach videos) led this session and thoroughly discussed the various work holding and tool holding options for the Slant-PRO. There was a large crowd at this particular session and the Tormach employees did an excellent job of fielding the questions. Andy Grevstad (another member of the Tormach crew that visited my studio, as well as Senior Applications Engineer at Tormach) was one of several employees that answered questions about the Slant-PRO. Mike did an excellent job of going over the basics of gang tooling and turret tooling and their application on the new lathe. I walked away from this session feeling that I had a better understanding of what my tooling and workholding needs would be if I were to buy a Slant-PRO. I think most people during this session were just anxious to see the lathe run, so there was a lot of hovering around the lathe afterwards. I ran into Tormach videographer and designer, Dan Montenegro (he shot the Tormach video in my studio) after this session and he introduced me to Kyle Mayer who would be conducting the next session involving the Slant-PRO. Dan informed me that he worked on the user interface screens for the cnc lathe control software. Kyle and Dan informed me about the proprietary software and the reasoning behind not using Mach 3 as the Tormach mills do. By creating their own software interface and macros using LinuxCNC based software allows for the proper pulse rate to assure that they could do rigid thread milling on the lathe. Dan was running around shooting pics and footage of the Open House event, but it was really good to see him. Cassie came over in between sessions and showed me the warehouse facility that was to the side of the session room. Impressive to say the least. By the time I had a little time to chat with various people there, it was time for the next session.
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