Theoretically it could be done with enough work but that is definitely
an advanced level project for someone with programming knowledge and
plenty of spare time. What is your objection to running the machines
separately? You have to load/unload the machines independently so it is
no big deal to press a start button after loading the work. In fact it
may be more efficient. With all of the machines synchronized you have to
wait for them to finish then unload/load them all for the next cycle.
With independent machines you can be loading/unloading one while the
others are cutting.
Many of these Chinese suppliers can supply their machines with gang
spindles as an option. Do you need tool change? I don't think many do
gang heads with tool change.
Les
On 11/12/2017 17:05, Todd Zuercher wrote:
I've been mulling an idea over in my head. Seeking ideas and opinions.
I work with wood carving machines, doing large production runs in a factory
setting. In order to increase production speed we have several large
multi-spindle gang router machines. These are big and expensive custom built
contraptions.
I've been seeing these very inexpensive Chinese CNCs. (We could buy a dozen of
them for the price of one of our big custom machines.) And some of them don't
even look half bad, in pictures at least.
My idea, instead of having 1 huge multi spindle machine, what if we tried
putting multiple small inexpensive machines side by side and controlled them as
one machine. For example have 4 small 3ftx4ft routers lined up. I think I'd
still like to have each machine have it's own Linuxcnc PC and they would be
networked together. One of the PCs would be the master control and have the
HMI. Arrange so that all 4 machines can be moved together as one, starting and
running the same part program simultaneously, but also be able to do some
things independently on each machine, like touching off, homing, jogging... I
might even want the option to be able to operate each or selected machines
independently at times if that might be convenient for the job(s) at hand or if
one of them breaks down.
How possible do you guys think this idea might be?
How big of a stumbling block is the remote control of multiple instances of
Linuxcnc by a single user-interface going to be?
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