[BradmanOH]

We (hive13.org) just got a proLight Turning center and a proLight Machining Center pretty cheap. We have the controller boxes but I don't want to deal with antique software and crazy interfaces. I'd like to convert them to Mach 3.
I'm starting with the turning center and it looks to be in excellent mechanical condition. The steppers are SLO-SYN M063-CS06 that are running in 4 wire mode. The spindle is a Baldor DC (90V) 10.6A.
This is my first CNC "rebrain" so I'm a bit of a newbie.
I think I'd like to stick with the Gecko 540 but I'm not clear if I also need an interface board. One of the others members is suggesting a LinuxCNC setup.
We have a modest budget (we are a nonprofit) so I can't just go with a full conversion kit.
I'd like to test the steppers to make sure they are working OK, they feel fine. The ballscrews and rails feel smooth and are not worn.
I feel like we should be able to install a modern system that lets us use a computer from this decade.
Any advice is appreciated. I dislike plowing fields that others have already sown.

Thanks in advance,

BradmanOH

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
all development on Mach3 ceased seven years ago, it still works and many thousands still use it but it is what it is. Mach4 is still developing and in many
important and subtle ways is a vast improvement over Mach3.

Mach4 all but requires an external motion controller. Many of the early Mach3 installations used a parallel port, ie the motion controller was built into the PC.
This had the advantage of being cheap but a PC based motion controller like a parallel port has major performance limitations., hard to recommend.

An external motion controller like an Ethernet SmoothStepper (ESS) ($190) by Warp9TD relieves the PC of having to do motion control for which they are poor.
The PC is the GUI, trajectory planner and Gcode interpreter, the ESS generates the required high speed, high accuracy pulse streams, and the G540 amplifies
those pulse streams to drive stepper motors.

Machs parallel port required a 32bit PC with Windows7 or Windows XP, and desktops only at that! This restricts the choice of PCs to really old stiff, hardly recommended.
With an external motion controller like an ESS then the PC can be 64 bit, desktop or laptop, up to Windows 11, so a much MUCH wider choice of PC hardware.
The other thing is that you don't need a powerful PC, one of the grandkids cast off school PCs would be more than adequate.

Craig

[BradmanOH]

Thanks, that is what I thought. I'd really like to not depend on ancient computers and electronics.

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
my Mach4 mill runs on a MiniITX single board PC with a dual core Atom processor and on-chip graphics, ie no video card. It can't 'pull the skin off a rice pudding', but still works just fine.
The only time I notice its lack of power is when I load a largish Gcode program, say 5Mb or more. Its slow to load and draw the toolpath but thereafter it works perfectly.

The bottom line is that a PC is not the limiting factor with a modern CNC system. Mach (3 or 4), UCCNC and Planet CNC will run perfectly well on modest PCs, the external motion controller
in each case relieves the PC of generating high frequency pulse streams, not a PC's forte.

While my machine runs on a very modest PC, my main PC for which I do CAD/CAM, simulating/crafting code for my machine is a much more powerful regular PC. My machine PC is not
on a network....ever. Someone explained it to me once that 'a PC that controls a CNC machine is, or should be, be a dedicated machine controller that just happens to use Windows as an OS, it is no
longer a general purpose computing machine'.

LinuxCNC is free and open source and has much to recommend it. It obviously runs on a Linux PC, and that may be less well understood by the majority of your users. While LinuxCNC may be
free most users choose a Mesa control board to match to the machine, commonly around $250 depending on features. It must be said that Mesa control boards are good value and are a good
match with LinuxCNC but rather count against LinuxCNC being free....good value but not quite free.

There are a couple of other choices that you might like to research. One is called Centroid Acorn. It is a motion control board and matching CNC software that is installed on a PC. It is cost
competitive with Mach and UCCNC, but given that it comes from one vendor is more like a 'plug and play' version. You may lose a little in terms of flexibility but likely gain is ease of set-up and use.
Masso G3 and Edging are similar products that have a good reputation as close to 'plug and play' as you can get.

Craig

[mactec54]

We (hive13.org) just got a proLight Turning center and a proLight Machining Center pretty cheap. We have the controller boxes but I don't want to deal with antique software and crazy interfaces. I'd like to convert them to Mach 3.
I'm starting with the turning center and it looks to be in excellent mechanical condition. The steppers are SLO-SYN M063-CS06 that are running in 4 wire mode. The spindle is a Baldor DC (90V) 10.6A.
This is my first CNC "rebrain" so I'm a bit of a newbie.
I think I'd like to stick with the Gecko 540 but I'm not clear if I also need an interface board. One of the others members is suggesting a LinuxCNC setup.
We have a modest budget (we are a nonprofit) so I can't just go with a full conversion kit.
I'd like to test the steppers to make sure they are working OK, they feel fine. The ballscrews and rails feel smooth and are not worn.
I feel like we should be able to install a modern system that lets us use a computer from this decade.
Any advice is appreciated. I dislike plowing fields that others have already sown.

Thanks in advance,

BradmanOH

The best upgrade you could do is to use the Eding cnc Control or Acorn cnc Control, they are by far the best lathe packages, Acorn just slightly better at the moment, having full encoder feedback for the spindle is a big plus

[mactec54]

Hi,
my Mach4 mill runs on a MiniITX single board PC with a dual core Atom processor and on-chip graphics, ie no video card. It can't 'pull the skin off a rice pudding', but still works just fine.
The only time I notice its lack of power is when I load a largish Gcode program, say 5Mb or more. Its slow to load and draw the toolpath but thereafter it works perfectly.

The bottom line is that a PC is not the limiting factor with a modern CNC system. Mach (3 or 4), UCCNC and Planet CNC will run perfectly well on modest PCs, the external motion controller
in each case relieves the PC of generating high frequency pulse streams, not a PC's forte.

While my machine runs on a very modest PC, my main PC for which I do CAD/CAM, simulating/crafting code for my machine is a much more powerful regular PC. My machine PC is not
on a network....ever. Someone explained it to me once that 'a PC that controls a CNC machine is, or should be, be a dedicated machine controller that just happens to use Windows as an OS, it is no
longer a general purpose computing machine'.

LinuxCNC is free and open source and has much to recommend it. It obviously runs on a Linux PC, and that may be less well understood by the majority of your users. While LinuxCNC may be
free most users choose a Mesa control board to match to the machine, commonly around $250 depending on features. It must be said that Mesa control boards are good value and are a good
match with LinuxCNC but rather count against LinuxCNC being free....good value but not quite free.

There are a couple of other choices that you might like to research. One is called Centroid Acorn. It is a motion control board and matching CNC software that is installed on a PC. It is cost
competitive with Mach and UCCNC, but given that it comes from one vendor is more like a 'plug and play' version. You may lose a little in terms of flexibility but likely gain is ease of set-up and use.
Masso G3 and Edging are similar products that have a good reputation as close to 'plug and play' as you can get.

Craig

UCCNC do not have a Lathe package, Mach3 and Mach4 are both hit and miss with the Lathe package

Acorn is by far the best Lathe package next would be Eding CNC nothing else you have listed compares

[tijundonghua60]

Everything will be okay. I tried it and it was fine. Good luck buddy. Madalin Stunt Cars

[BradmanOH]

I've got my hands on an old Acorn CNC board and everything seems to be working except I can't get the Encoder Z (single pulse per rev) signal. This machine has a dedicated spindle optical switch that is supposed to output to pin3 of the 9 pin connector from the spindle control board but that pin (orange wire) does not give me a pulse once per rev. I'm wondering if the optical switch is bad or I don't know what the signal should be (5v, 10ma). I don't seem to be getting anything once per rev from that wire.
Everything else seems to be working.