Re: 3drouters - desperately seeking sign

4a. desperately seeking sign
Posted by: "aerodecals" aerodecals@... aerodecals
Date: Sat Mar 3, 2007 9:16 pm ((PST))

First off thank you for taking the time to put this website together
however did that my hat is off to you, this is great. I Paid for a
cnc router from 3d routers in illinois last year and finally got part
of a machine this week. it is not all that I ordered but it has the
table 3 axis is 3 stepper motors, gantry, and is wired to what looks like a
control box. with a printer cable coming out of it. I sure would like
to put it together and have it work. it was suppose to have a bosch
motor and spindle and I want to use it for engraving and cutting
holes in .030 aluminum and to manufacture instrument panels for
equipment.

["3drouters.com" was the latest incarnation of Tom Edwards' many CNC router
businesses. Formerly, he ran Tooltech, which became CyberNC. It looks like
3drouters has gone down the same tube; it comes up in my browser as
"currently unavailable". Since I was briefly involved in reselling his
products, I ended up having to compensate my customers out of my own pocket
when he shipped them products that were incomplete or not what was promised
(if he ever actually shipped them anything at all.) When he declared
bankruptcy in 2004, he owed me several thousand dollars which I'm sure I'll
never see again. It sounds like this last business was conducted along the
same lines as the previous ones; I'd say you're lucky to have received
anything at all.]

I am not sure if it is even capable of cutting this material.

. I am currently doing this on an enco milling machine and it just
seems like overkill and very time consuming to do it manually for
each hole and location.
If some one is interested insteering me in the right direction I am
all ears. I put pictures of the machine I have up on the web at
aerodecals.com projects page under MISC HEADING CNC thumbnail and
am at present wondering what I will need to get this thing going.
I have computers with win 98, dos. win xp and win 2000
also have win access and win vb6 software. Any help or leads would be
great. I have no cnc software but have adobe illustrator, cad
corel draw 10 .and some vectorizing programs for 2d stuff Thanks Jack

[It sounds like you're not getting much help from Tom, which doesn't
surprise me. But if all you're lacking is the spindle (that would be the
Bosch router); why not buy one and try it? Does the machine move when
commanded? If you didn't get any software with it, download Mach3
http://www.machsupport.com/ , install it on a Windows XP or 2000 computer
(1ghz CPU minimum) and give it a try. If none of your computers are up to
that spec, try TurboCNC http://www.dakeng.com/turbo.html on one of your DOS
or Win98 machines. Use a 25 pin bidirectional Centronics cable to hook the
control box to the computer. If you knew the pin-outs, that would simplify
things - was any documentation provided? The demo version of Mach will
execute up to 999 lines of code, and has a simple CAM utility that will
convert your drawing (from Corel or Illustrator) into toolpaths the machine
can run - if there isn't something wrong with the control box, which can't
be ruled out at this point... ]

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com