Re: What does everybody use...

Thanks John for the reply. Most of my machining was on conventional
machines and even the odd line shaft system tossed in, so all this is
very new. I really needed to know I guess what cards and software makes
all this neat stuff run. Once I am armed with most of that, I will be
able to figure out how I can adapt it to the machine and start to
operate something.

Cheers,
Don Hughes

John Stevenson wrote:

>
> From: john@... (John Stevenson)
>
> 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
>
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