Pocket NC Spring 2020 Update

WE ARE OPEN

Pocket NC is still open and fulfilling orders during this time of COVID-19. Pocket NC is located in Montana, USA, which has a low population density compared to much of the United States. While there is spread of the virus in our area, we are not hit as hard as many parts of the US. Our staff that can work from home is and our production team is on a rotating schedule with just a couple people in the shop at a time to minimize exposure. We already manufacture most of our own parts or source locally so have not seen many supply chain disruptions. We currently stock V2-10 and V2-50 machines and have inventory on hand of all accessories. At this time we don't anticipate a scenario of having a lead time. We will keep all lead time information on our website up-to-date.

This is where Pocket NC is, not too many people.

Some of our shop crew at our Christmas party, pre-6-feet times. Ethan and Scott build and calibrate your machines. Billy configures the electronics. Jake is part of the current work from home crew on the software team.

We did reduce our shipping schedule to Tuesdays and Fridays each week. FedEx is still picking up and delivering to most parts of the world. We are monitoring possible international delivery disruptions. FedEx is instituting international shipping surcharges for some regions, this does affect shipping costs to APAC countries (Asia and Pacific Countries), this does not affect Europe. We will bring these costs down once we are out of this surcharge time. 

For the first time we are offering financing through Stearns Bank for business customers in the United States. Small businesses can apply for financing through this channel. More information can be found here.

COURSE

We announced free access to our Pocket NC 101 Course in mid-March, allowing users 2 weeks of access to the course. This has been very popular, so we decided to extend free access for 2 weeks through April. We are extending discounts to those who complete the course, so look out for an email if you have finished the course. We are so glad that the course has been useful and have enjoyed seeing an uptick in makers making during their time at home. The Pocket NC Facebook Community run by a Pocket NC owner has seen quite a bit of makers posting what they are machining lately, so check it out if you haven’t already.

SOFTWARE

Our software team has some updates, we launched my.pocketnc.com. John, our principal software engineer, explains what this is:

If you connect your Pocket NC to your local network using the Ethernet port, but don’t have access to the router, it can be tricky to know what IP address is assigned. The site http://my.pocketnc.com currently scans the most commonly used local network addresses and will list any Pocket NC machines it finds. Previously seen machines will be saved locally to your browser, so you don’t have to scan every time. If your Pocket NC is updated to version v4.5.1 or higher, it will also list what kind of machine it is (V1, V2-10 or V2-50). We believe this tool will be helpful for schools and businesses that use multiple Pocket NC machines on a single network. We plan to add more features, such as labeling your Pocket NC machines, showing the current status of machines (cutting, idle, etc.) and ways to customize the scanning process for those that know information about their network setup, but we wanted to get this tool out to our users now, see how you like it, and gather any feedback you may have on features for the future. 

The software for the Pocket NC itself has also had a number of useful improvements. One feature of interest is that you can now run G-Code directly from USB devices plugged into the machine. Any .ngc files found on the device will show up in the UI's file selection menu, and can be opened and run as normal. The USB device must stay connected to the Pocket NC while the program is running. Some other important changes include a performance improvement that will make the UI more responsive and also greatly reduces issues with reliably connecting to some machines, and a fix for a long-standing bug with the work-coordinate systems, where the offset values were always reported as zero after startup, even though in reality whatever values where active at the prior shutdown remained in place. Additional changes can be found here.

We hope that everyone is doing well and staying healthy. As always, reach out to us if you have any questions or feedback, contact us or call +1(406)451-3799, 8am-5pm MDT.