On Fri, 2007-05-11 at 14:40 +0000, Will wrote: > I recently purchased a mill- it's a RF-30 type bench mill with "J&S > Products" controller board and drivers with 640 oz/in bipolar > steppers. > > This included software "CNCPRO 2.25"...
On Fri, 2007-05-11 at 18:41 +0100, Wayne Weedon wrote: > CNC Pro was also a product of the Ahha group long before the subject > of > this group, later it was changed to Ahha Artisan. > > That business went out of business a month or so ago. > > www.ahha.com I can't help but point out that this is _the_ reason why only free software solutions are economically viable in the long term. In the summer of 1995 my Bridgeport Boss 8 CNC went kaflooey. Service from Bridgeport cost $140/hour + travel + lodging + food. Any visit from the Bridgeport man was going to cost north of $2k. Also, since my machine had been retrofitted with SEM motors and Encoder Products encoders rather than the Powertron/BEI motors & encoders that came stock, I'm sure the first thing they'd want to do is replace all 3 servo motors at $1,500 each. Finally, they didn't guarantee that they could actually fix the machine! Needless to say, that was not going to happen... I also investigated other retrofit options, mainly Anilam ($22,000) and Centroid ($I forget, but $10K+). I actually went up to State College, PA where Centroid is located and talked to their people & toured their shop. I really did like the system and I thought the price was realistic, but ultimately I didn't buy it because in the back of my mind I couldn't rationalize the idea of replacing one expensive proprietary technology with another, leaving myself still dependent on a company that could raise the price of parts and service beyond my means, or simply go out of business and leave me stranded with no support, or perhaps worse, at the mercy of some third party looking to make a huge profit supporting those who have no other choice. I ended up subcontracting out all the work in my shop that I couldn't do myself (manually) and I let the CNC sit until 1996 when I got involved with the EMC. If you fast forward to today (11 years!), I have a friend who bought a Mori-Seiki vertical machining center with a Yasnac MX1 control. His spindle drive is starting to go bad and Yaskawa no longer repairs or supports his model. Their only suggestion is an upgrade/retrofit to their new model drive. I can't imagine how much that is going to cost, but I'm going to try to replace some sketchy looking electrolytic caps on the base driver board to see if that's the problem. If I can't get it going, he'll have to bend over & take it no matter what because the CNC requires the complex electrical interface provided by the Yaskawa spindle drive. We _may_ be able to hack in a cheaper drive, like the ones from Automation Direct, but that is an iffy proposition since we don't have complete documentation of the drive to CNC interface. Anyway, proprietary technology is certainly one of those Faustian bargains... Thanks, Matt P.S. Cross posting this to the emc-users list for their amusement as well... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
