Does anyone know if Tormach still sells and supports EncyCAM? I sent in a question about upgrading before Memorial Day but never heard back from Jake.
Thanks for any info - Mike
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Short answer: no. All ENCY issues now direct from ENCY only. Did not get an explanation as to why when contacting Tormach.
Thanks Peter - that’s good to know. I do feel that Tormach should have let it’s Sprut/Ency customers know about the change.
I agree. It was kept pretty quiet. Business decision, resources drain, software problems, security issue? – very sudden with no notice to the Tormach community I was aware of. We are still running SprutCAM 15 – ENCY startup has been an issue, and in our opinion, too many unnecessary features and menus to sort through. Could be a learning curve issue, but we noticed they are still building their machine support base and do not cover some Tormach machine schemas. We were not impressed with the initial product and kept our standalone ENCY license for experimentation until it matures as a platform. The tendency for software developers to run off cloud services is a major security concern for us, and the Cyprus connection is still something our customers are researching. You may want to investigate a dongle for the ENCY key to run without the cloud. Tormach arranged that for us prior to the walk-away. But maintenance contract with ENCY has been an issue. Good luck with using it – we are holding off for now as a production software.
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I recently bought another year of maintenance so will find out soon how well Ency 3 works compared to Ency 1. In general, I found that each release of Sprut worked better for me than the previous version, though that may just have been me getting used to it. I’m mostly a retired hobbyist that does some paid work on the side so my needs are probably less demanding than those of the pros.
I’ve been on a dongle since SprutCAM 4 and the Ency sales guy tells me that I can continue to use Ency 3 with that dongle so hopefully I won’t have any cloud issues to deal with. Ency was at IMTS, which wasn’t far from me, but I wasn’t able to attend. It would have been nice to share some feedback with them.
I use Ency 2. I also have the usb key and run stand alone.
only change I found that surprised me was, In the past I always drilled a hole in pocket areas and sprut would automatically use the hole as an entry point for end mill operations like waterline. It does not do that now and any older programs loaded in new version will have a problem. it will compile and run just fine but at the machine it will plunge the endmill unless you set a ramp or spiral type start.
Rest of it more or less works as expected. I like that I can have a couple different programs opened in tabs at one time. And the way fixture setup works makes it easy to create multi fixture / offset part programs with far less clicks than in the past. oh and I like the peck option on lathe profile operation. you can avoid long string birds nests when cutting aluminum.
My maintenance runs out next month I think, so I would need to renew to get ency 3
I had to contact the US distributor through Ency’s web site to order maintenance since Tormach no longer provides this service. It went pretty quickly, but that was during IMTS week and Ency was in the US then. Apparently the US rep is based in Cyprus like most of the rest of the company.
What do you think of the most recent tutorials? The series seems to be pretty well done to me, though you may not need them as much as I do.
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Will look at tutorials. So far, I find the program easy enough to use and setup parts on.
Couple quirks here and there that takes time to get use to. But I like it overall.
I have been following this for a while and waiting for an “offical” statement from Tormach. Apparently they don’t feel we deserve an explanation or any suggestions on how to proceed. When Ency was released I was on Sprut 17 (been a customer, dutifully buying updates all along, since 11); I called and asked quite specifically - should I spend the money down this road or is this the time to hop to another platform. I was told “oh no we are firmly committed and will be supporting this new ENCY platform for the long haul.”
I have spent as much as I have with Tormach/Sprut mainly because of the excellent support through the years. Now I find out, not from a email or official statement, but via a forum post from a customer, they have split with the Cyprus folks. (and thanks to the original poster) Nothing on the site, no official announcement. Apparently the trust we place in Tormach is not appreciated. Small operations like mine cannot afford to swap amongst systems, the learning curve is just too steep. I probably have a hundred hours just in my Sprut/Ency tool library.
Things change and adversity occurs - it’s how a company handles bad circumstances that matters most. Tormach chose VERY POORLY here to (apparently) pretend Ency just never existed. Wow, really?
Truly dissappointing.
Following Mike Henry’s lead, I have just requested to renew maintenance, but I have big reservations about support from cyprus, and I will not readily trust Tormach again with my business.
Alan
I’ve actually had pretty good support from Cyprus and language translation seems to be less problematic than it was a few years ago.
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Just saw that sherline is going out of business too.