[blazemaguire]

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

[tubeguy]

Ill be watching this post as Im in the same boat. Ive been to all the sites and looked at hardware aplenty. Im still bothered by the somewhat wimpyness of the hardware and a converstion I had with a builder. His opinion was that all this hobby grade stuff is great if you dont have to make money with it or get inspected by your insurance company etc. I didnt like hearing that and am still looking myself. Bummer for me I have 1.7KW 230 volt 3ph servos to power....

[Al_The_Man]

Hi,

First post, and a big question. Fully understand if people don't want to share hard earned knowledge to help,
Rob

I thought that was what 50% of the people here were doing??
Have you looked at Mach?
Free for up to a program limit and uses the parallel port for control.

Im still bothered by the somewhat wimpyness of the hardware and a converstion I had with a builder. His opinion was that all this hobby grade stuff is great if you dont have to make money with it or get inspected by your insurance company etc. I didnt like hearing that and am still looking myself. Bummer for me I have 1.7KW 230 volt 3ph servos to power....

That is not quite true, I am a CNC integrator, you can retro fit a machine according to code etc, it is purely your choice if you want to ignore the rules and make it per your personal spec.
If you are retrofitting a machine with 3 ph 1.7Kw servo's I would suspect the the size of the machine tends to be on the outer edge of the home machine shop realm.
But it is not impossible, there are many drives now such as Advanced motion that would cater to that size of motor easily, and 1 phase.
Also now VFD's will run 3 ph spindles on 1 phase.
It depends on what extent you want to go, you mention earning a living from it, then this, and the fact it is probably a larger capacity machine, you should be looking at the upper end s/w such as Camsoft etc, look at the ROI to see if it is viable?
Al.

[tubeguy]

Hi Al, Im always inclined the cheaper way if I can get away with it. Wish I had more time to research, this site is like gold that way....

[blazemaguire]

Thanks for the replys guys, I've done a bit of searching and found this thread (hope the link works) -Someone trying to do the same thing! - I'll P.M him and see if he's still on the forum.

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/bencht...uet_lathe.html

I have both the machine and the interface box (which has a series and parrallel connection), which is more than the guy on the thread above had.

I'll look into Mach as software, I assume as with most software there will be 'pirate versions' but with this machine running on a school network I can't get away with anything non-legit.... and being a school we have no money to purchase it unless it's really cheap! - Any other software suggestions?

thanks so far!

[Al_The_Man]

I'll look into Mach as software, I assume as with most software there will be 'pirate versions' but with this machine running on a school network I can't get away with anything non-legit.... and being a school we have no money to purchase it unless it's really cheap! - Any other software suggestions?

thanks so far!

It is not pirate, they offer it is a free download, if you want to run larger part programs then there is a fee.
Also EMC is free.
Al.