[ELM3060]

I have a Hafco HM-50 Metal Master, which I am planning to convert to CNC.
I often cruse through the auctions looking for good deals and as I will be needing a computer PC/Laptop to run the CNC from, why not also buy it from an Auction.

One of the PC's that often come up and generally sell reasonably cheap, are Lenovo Think Center PC's, but I do not know a lot about them.

My designs are in Solidworks, on a Toshiba Satellite A200 Notebook, do not have CAM as yet and will probably go with Mach3. I would rather have a different computer for the CNC (out the shed) than us my Notebook.

So are the Lenovo Think Center's any good for running Mach3 and a CNC off ?
I have done a few Google searches for Lenovo (etc) and CNC but only seem to get (Lenovo) laptops and complaints of clunkyness?

I know I did read a thread on here sometime back, members did mention that they used a Lenovo Think Center, but I cannot find it now.

If not Lenovo, what sort of computer would you recommend ?

Thanks in advance and cheers.
Eddie

[mactec54]

ELM3060

Yes the Lenovo ThinkCentre work great for Mach & as you say quite cheap, make sure when you get one that has 2g ram P4 3.4 cpu, & has XP loaded & running, you pay a little more but worth it

[Flateric]

I run a lenovo m57, mach3 mostly because it happened to be an extra machine I had kicking around and find it is great for this purpose. I had initially chosen it for the job because of it having a par. port. But this has become unused since the purchase of a smooth stepper board which allows USB connection and creates 2 par. ports for use. Which I quite like because it allows even the crappiest pc to control my machine smoothly.

I mention the smoothstepper simply because it may affect your budget for a spare cnc machine since it is under 200 bucks and places far less importance on the cpu of the pc.