Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] 'Get the Message Out' & Western Canadian Robot Games

Doug Fortune wrote:

> glass cutters to pcb millers to woodworkers and even 'industrial

automation' applications where they had been previously been quoted prices
too high to be feasible. One guy in particular had an automated 'roughing
cutoff' application where he employs someone all day to advance material a
certain amount (from long stock) to +/- 1/4" and hits a button -
whereupon the saw cuts the material, turns off, and retracts. He'd just
need 1 stepper with a rubber wheel, 1 solenoid, and a simple DOS program to
read a file and advance the stepper appropriately.

>

We built a machine to do this very thing about two years ago. It used a
$149 PLC to control the whole process. It would punch and cut a piece every
four seconds until it ran out of stock. The amazing thing is that it
required less than 20 lines of code.

We used hydraulics but for $199 you can get a PLC with built-in
step/direction profiling to drive a stepper. These brick PLC's are much
more practical (and cheaper) than a PC for dedicated machines.

Doug