Denford CNC

[hdskip]

We were fortunate to have one of the local colleges donate a Denford CNC lathe and CNC mill. Both have tool changers and all necessary tolling for both machines. Included were all the manuals and info. Machines are in mint condition. The only issue is finding computers old enough to work with these machines. They are 12-13 years old. The issue teaching CNC is having enough work stations to keep students from getting bored. (both high schoolers and adults). Christmas in September!!!!!









Educating the youth of America

 

[billdeme]

I had a similar problem with an early 80`s Cincinnati cnc lathe fitted with aromatic 850 controls. The pc I used to download and store my programs finely died. I purchased a new one. It turned out the transfer rates between the lathe and computer were too farr off to change it in my dc /dnc program. Downloading an up to date program did the trick. It had more options of transfer to ates

 

[arlo]

We were fortunate to have one of the local colleges donate a Denford CNC lathe and CNC mill. Both have tool changers and all necessary tolling for both machines. Included were all the manuals and info. Machines are in mint condition. The only issue is finding computers old enough to work with these machines. They are 12-13 years old. The issue teaching CNC is having enough work stations to keep students from getting bored. (both high schoolers and adults). Christmas in September!!!!!


Educating the youth of America

What computer features are limiting you to old computers? Is it hardware or software?

 

[hdskip]

It seems to be a software issue. The donor was using Windows XP. We have several here at the school so I don't think it is going to be an issue. Since Windows is no longer supporting XP we just won't hook into the internet. Looking forward to using these. We have a Novamill and a Novaturn These machines are extremely heavy for their size. I'll report how they do after I've had a chance to use them some. The nice thing is that they arrived here complete. Stay tuned.
Gary

 

[arlo]

It seems to be a software issue. The donor was using Windows XP. We have several here at the school so I don't think it is going to be an issue. Since Windows is no longer supporting XP we just won't hook into the internet. Looking forward to using these. We have a Novamill and a Novaturn These machines are extremely heavy for their size. I'll report how they do after I've had a chance to use them some. The nice thing is that they arrived here complete. Stay tuned.
Gary

I'd like to hear how you make out. I got a Denford MicroMill and a Denford MicroLathe at auctions. I've just ordered the parts to build an Atom based computer to act as a controller. There seems to be a limited selection of cheap Atom motherboards with installed parallel ports. I wondered if that was your problem. My machine will be Linux based and use LinuxCNC so I can't help you or learn from you with the Windows problems.

Best of luck.

 

[AR1911]

Microsoft has backtracked since their EOL announcement last Spring. I has just acquired an XP PC with a CNC mill, and was in the process of updating it when I realized I could not update the OS, even using the manual download of SP3, which had disappeared. But with some research I found that MS had quietly reinstated limited support. Sure enough, a few days later that old PC was up to date, using automatic update.

 

[jumps4]

these machines are great learning tools
Are you planning on using the denford controller and software the machines originally came with or changing out to something else.
I have the micromill and microturn and had to convert because of not having the dongle and the cost of the denford software.

steve

 

[hdskip]

These machines came complete but for the PC. I'm going to try to use the Denford software. They were used up to the time we received them so they should work. I'd have to enlist some brighter help if we have to change anything. Information technology isn't in my wheelhouse. Heck, it isn't even on my boat!