Many of my clients have various types of machines that are used to make specialized products.  These range from milling machines for making jewelry, engravers for making plaques or medals, physical testing equipment, etc. All of these machines are driven by some form of CAD software running on a Windows based computer. In many cases these combinations of a Windows PC and a manufacturing machine have been running for years. The issue now is that many of the computer portions of these systems are running on older non supported versions of Windows. WIndows 98, Windows XP, WIndows 2000, etc. In addition, many times the CAD software being used is no longer available. This is fine as long as the Windows PC is still operational. However, I routinely find situations where the PC itself is starting to fail and/or there are issues with the software no longer being available or supported.

These situations can be resolved, but it takes time as you are often dealing with multiple vendors. In many of these situations, there are no vendors to contact as the software or related hardware interfaces are no longer available. Recently I had a client with this issue. It took a long time and many emails, phone calls, text messages, etc. to resolve the problem. I was able to resolve the issue. The solution involved 3 vendors plus the purchase of a brand new Windows 11 Pro computer and related computer to machine interfaces (controllers, cabling, etc.). Everything is now up to date and operational, but there was time frame where the company could not produce any products to satisfy open customer orders.

If you have a this type of process in your company, give me a call. I have solid experience in resolving these kind of issues.