Originally Posted by
777funk
I purchased a Techno 040 today and need to figure out how to get it actually cutting material. This was a good used machine and it's working.
The guy I bought it from was a sign maker. He had some files he'd made in CADlink Profilelab and then ran in MSDos G-Code software (I believe he program was actually called GCode.
But what I was wondering, is this all I need to use this machine? He used ProfileLab to create the drawing and ran it in the G-Code software.
Is there something else I should invest in? I'd like to cut instruments (mostly solid bodies). This routing would involve cutting 1-2.5" thick pieces depending on the part and it would be all the way through in a few passes.
MSDos? That doesn't exactly sound like G-Code. It also sounds like an ISA bus interface, of which Techno doesn't support in terms of newer software. The irony to this is that the same code works for older and newer machines, except that port space is in ISA bus (0..0x300) space, and a couple of bits are different. As I have a similar machine in addition to the newer machines I sell my customers, I wrote my own interface for it. If you're going to stay with techno controls, you'll want to either bug the developers to provide an ISA bus version of software, or likely spend $1700.00 for their PCI version of card.
Joe Jared - OsiruSoft Research and Engineering - http://www.oretek.com