Finally !! PM 932 installed

Is a Centroid controller out of the question? There is really nothing that competes with Mach3 in price. It might make sense to develop your own house brand, using one of the available, less expensive motion controllers to do the heavy lifting. There are quite a few options available, but I only have personal experience with one brand. In my opinion, direct PC control sucks, at least when using a Windows OS. While my machine is running, I can be working on another CAM file, or actually drawing in a CAD program with no problem.

For simple shapes and patterns, like squaring a block or large facing operations, I will just pop Notepad up and write a quick G-code routine to do the job. I have a few ''canned routines'' that I just change a few parameters in and press GO. If it's too complex, it's easier just to run it through a CAM program, even if I have to go in an do a quick edit.

Hi Jim,

The Centroid units have a great reputation as far as I can tell. The product information is very good and by all accounts, it seems great. It appears though, the kit prices are on-par with the cost of the mill -effectively doubling the price. -That won't go over very well...

The CamSoft package looks very good and I'm tracking down more information on it.


Ray
 
Do you happen to remember which PC based controller you used and were pleased with? I have a background project of locating a second source to be offered as an option for the PM45CNC. Naturally, I'd prefer to start looking at the brands/models that folks have positive experiences with. Anyone's thoughts/opinions are welcome.

On a related matter, I'm curious about how much programming folks tend to do on the controller alone vs. generating CAM code with a primary CAM software package. I've tried to direct programming on Mach 3 but, it just seems too risky. I've watched many videos of direct programming on the Hurco/WinMax platform and it looks really cool. That controller cannot be purchased individually though...


Ray

The controller was the OEM supplied, PC based controller that came with the Milltronics machine. I believed it was called Centurion. I don't know if it can be purchased individually. The machine came with a very small, dos (Windows CMD prompt) based program that would fit on a 3.5" diskette very easily. You could program at your desktop or on the machine. The program was pretty simple but was all we really needed for the simple operations we performed on the machine. Other programs could be used of course, but the simple program was enough for the needs we had on our machine.

We mostly programed at the desktop and tweeked the programs at the machine. We found that the program was simple enough that if you wanted to program a few simple operations to a part, you could generally do it fast enough that it was faster to program the Milltronics and make a part than using the manual knee mill. If you were making more than one part, the payoff was definetly there.

The website is http://milltronics.net. I don't know if it is still there, but they used to have a download version of the program so you could evaluate it. There was a mill and a lathe version.
 
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