I have a Shizouka mill that originally had a Bandit controller and servo drives. I replaced the Bandit with Mach 3 and a Vital Systems interface. That worked fine until one of the encoders died. I am not an active maching business so because of the cost to repair the encoder, the mill has not been used for many years. It is now less expensive to replace all the drives with steppers than repair the one encoder. Unfortunately, the Vital Systems interface will not work with steppers. One that will is extremely expensive. I need an interface between Mach 3 (possibly 4) and the mill that can control limit switches, a tool changer, a VFD, etc.

Any suggestion the forum might have will be appreciated.