Hi,
First post, and a big question. Fully understand if people don't want to share hard earned knowledge to help, and i'm definatley being cheeky asking!
I'm a secondary school teacher in England. - We're not badly kitted out regards CAD/CAM (2 laser cutters, a 4 axis CNC router).
However, we have a Boxford Duet (combined lathe and mill) - see link:
Boxford Duet
Unfortunatly, its many years old and is sat in a corner gathering dust because its designed to run on an ancient 'Acorn/BBC' style computer, which we no longer have any of! (this machine was obviously brought while I was still AT school!)
Anyway, Boxford are still making the same machine, exactly the same only update to run on modern software. - Thing is they want £4000 to take our old machine and convert to run on modern software! (a brand new machine is only £5.5K - My school cannot afford anywhere near that!
I'm fairly handy with electronics and interfacing and am willing to treat this as a long term project but What i'm asking you experience people is "Is there any fairly cheap/easy way of 're-engineering' this machine to run on modern computers (ideally serial or USB connection) and with open source software? - I would like to be able to use it as a teaching aid for demonstrating CNC lathe work. - What interfaces might work? could you recomend any interface board providers? - what software would be best suited for simple CNC lathe work in a school environment? -
Sorry if this post is in the wrong place, there just seems to be SOOO many different sections in the forum I diddnt know where to start!
thanks in anticipation
Rob