I had made further improvements, after the first model, so the prototype was siting around. Someone talked me into selling it to them, and they really liked it and let people know about it.
I found myself manufacturing them. At the time, I had a full-time job, and BATT Laps to make. With my hundred mile a day commute, this gave me a 110 Hour Work Week. About eighty have been sold.
I could not find a shop that would make the parts on CNC equipment for me, because of the small volumes, so had to find a way to make them more manufacturable. Also, the $1,750 cost put them out of reach for most people, and the machining and polishing of stainless steel was killing me.
After considerable background effort, I introduced a battery-powered CMOS version, made of polyacetal, as a marketplace surprise.
This announcement created mixed reactions, depending on the observer's being a consumer or a manufacturer. Obviously, in this small niche market, new innovations only happen every generation, if that, so people reading old Lapidary Journals from back then would see their "New" machines all the time.
This addition to the XS3 page did not always get a warm welcome from some manufacturers:
Really, some people just CAN'T take a joke..
Unknown to me, at the time, the Graves Company was in the middle of wanting to offer some product improvements to their popular reasonably-priced product line. They bought all the rights to the machine, putting me out of the faceting machine business for a long time. The rights included the new circuitry, which shares no parts with the earlier XS3's. (Most of the parts in the XS3 are no longer manufactured- The Electronics Industry moves fast.), but I of course support the existing 80 units in use, and intend to continue to do so for the existing customers.) The Graves units are just beginning to be manufactured in serious quantities. New product launches are demanding and entail new machinery and techniques, and long, hard work.
The XS mounted to an early Graves base:
The XS mounted to a Polymetrics Scintillator base:
(Some people are distracted by the rapid changing of the final hundredths decade.) As experience teaches, reading an angle, even at 1/100 degree, is not close enough for perfect meets! For perfect cutting, only a depth measurement such as the Beale-Woolley meter will accomplish this...OR the eye of a skilled cutter! A six-Dollar ohmmeter connected to the built-in contacts, provides the BW Meter.
Mast: 400 Series stainless, casehardened to Rockwell C 60.
Mast Bearing: Rated , 1,400 Pounds load.
Position Sensor MBTF: 10 Million cycles.
Angle trunnion Bearings: Mean dynamic load rating: 650 Pounds.
Quill Bearings: 545 Pounds MDL.
All bearings are sealed.
Accuracy: Calibrated 0-90 to 2 arc-minutes.
Resolution: +/- 00.03 degrees/Quadrant
Linearity, 0-90: 0.06%
Coarse calibration is locked and pinned at final assembly. An adjustment is provided for calibration with different powers supplies, etc.