Re: What does everybody use...

On Sun, 16 May 1999 23:25:03 -0700, you wrote:

>From: Don Hughes <pencad@...>
>
>Members:
>
>I would like to know if some of you kind folk would take a moment out of
>a busy period and do something for me, and maybe some of the newer
>members here that are still in the huge learning curve such as myself.
>
>I would like to know briefly what the majority of members here have for
>their setups. Please take me from the PC(including all hardware and
>software) all the way to the cutting head. This is just to be ensure
>that I have the grasp that I feel I am starting to get up to this point.
>
>I hope this is not being too demanding of the members.
>
>Thanks very much,
>

Hi Don

Mines easy its called checkbook CNC not as interesting as a project but I needed
to get up and running quick as I work with mine.

I have a Beaver CNC, like a manual Bridgeport only bigger that had an old
Posidata controller on when I bought it from a college, worked but tape reader
broken, limited to 999 lines of code and MDI input.
We bought the Ahha card plus an opto isolator card that's available here in the
UK and fitted it into a PC.
The isolator card then plugs direct into the stepper controller on the posidata
controller.
This meant that we kept the bottom half of the cabinet and scrapped the top half
with screen and keyboard etc.
We then made a sheet metal housing to accept a 12" monitor and keyboard on the
side of the beaver.

As I say all cheque book engineering and possibly not in the theme of this group
but the conversion took a weekend and paid for itself with a month.

There are some good machines out there to play with especially as CNC is getting
older it just takes a bit of looking.
Try local colleges they often yield good deals. I'm on to a CNC lathe at the
moment from a college and last week I bought a capstan lathe that has been
retrofitted to CNC with an Audit attachment and Fanuc OT controller. The nice
thing about this is that it can be bolted onto any centre lathe by its sub-plate
to convert it to CNC, it just needs a spindle signal from the host lathe.
I paid less for this than a basic Ahha card

Regards,
John Stevenson
Nottingham, England