Will Adams...who are you? 🤔

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@WillAdams

I want to know more about you. You’ve contributed so much to so many of my posts. And I appreciate you!

I know you work for Carbide 3d. But, what’s your role, how long have you been there, what’s your favorite milkshake? That kind of stuff.

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Well, I did fill in my profile here… so military brat, turned country boy from rural Virginia when my father retired to the county where he grew up, helped out the husband of one of my teachers doing composition for a newsletter he published, did a tour in the Air Force, went to college to study graphic design (and missed getting a minor in computer science by an incomplete in a 300-level course which wasn’t re-offered before I graduated), won some awards and was mentioned in a couple of magazine articles and worked a succession of jobs in that industry on projects ranging from pocket-sized books and brochures through a 2,200 page registry, and a point of presence display the size of a pallet for a watch company which was featured in their annual report that year, and now work for the Commonwealth of Pa.

Been associated with the project almost from the initial public release — basically, when I wasn’t able to back the original Shapeoko on Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/edwardrford/project-shapeoko-a-300-complete-cnc-machine?ref=live

I bought a used machine off eBay and helped out with the instructions, then trying to understand the machine better, worked on the Shapeoko wiki[1] (which I basically ruined by using as a personal notebook) and implemented some upgrades — when the Shapeoko 2 was launched I was offered a free machine in exchange for doing the instructions, when the SO3 was launched after Carbide 3D added the Shapeoko to their Nomad product line:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/178590870/the-nomad-cnc-mill

I was given a machine as a thank you, did some freelance work, and eventually landed my current position of off-site tech support.

I will note (once again) that I think the folks who actually do the real work and development should write a book along the lines of:

one can get a bit of a sense of this by reading the Carbide 3D blog:

(scroll down to the bottom and read from oldest to newest)

though Edward R. Ford, the machine designer did write a book:

I think the thing which best characterizes my history with the project is that the first project I did on my SO3:

was done by:

  • drawing up the design in Macromedia Freehand
  • exporting the dial into FontForge to make it into a character in a font so that it could be cut using F-Engrave
  • exporting the outlines into MakerCAM to cut the profile
  • using bCNC to drill holes to make a fixture, then cutting the above two files in register (I think I’m still mentioned in the notes for that project for some UI ideas)

you kids don’t know how nice you have it to be able to use Carbide Create and Motion — now get off my lawn — seriously, it’s quite remarkable how everything came together. We did do a brochure for the SO2 which documented this, but basically:

later the SO1 was taken up by Inventables, then the SO2 was done (2013), then Edward left and joined Carbide 3D (2014) and the SO3 was launched.

Not wild about milkshakes, having had to essentially live off them for six weeks after being hit by a car and breaking my jaw on the first day of summer vacation when I was 14.

[1] — something like to that, but far more readable and reasonable and approachable was done by @Julien

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and I did (La)TeX composition, and published some articles in TUGboat as well as helping out a bit for a brief while:

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Ok…that ain’t no profile (I read your profile and it wasn’t THIS)!!

First off, I am greatly saddened that a person can’t enjoy a milkshake. But understandable!

Thanks for the detailed response (typical of your usual awesome responses!) It is certainly my pleasure to know you better and to be in the same community as you AND to get such excellent responses from you through my crawling-through-jello phase of learning how to run my CNC.

You epically ruined my morning routine as I read through your whole response, clicked on every link, learned a lot more about Shapeoko’s history (I read through both the kickstarter campaigns you linked to), and learned about fonts. I will admit I did NOT read the entire Shapeoko blog (that is for another destruction of morning routine(s).

So I once again, with deeper appreciation, thank you for all your help so far and in the future!

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I guess I was thinking of:

(which linking to, would have gotten me to bed earlier)

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Ah yes!! Didn’t think about that.

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I, too, appreciate knowing more about Will. He has been repeatedly and extraordinarily helpful to me.

Jon

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