Ignoramus30024 wrote:

On 2010-12-21, Lloyd E. Sponenburgh lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:
Ignoramus30024 fired this volley in
:

Then you would be right at home with EMC2!

If one of the vendors sells a kit version with EMC2, I'd be happier than
a pig in slop.

Lloyd, is your machine servo motor based?

Do you know what your encoders are like?

I considered my mill a "kit", in the sense of coming with servo motors
mounted on it. I just had to add encoders, servo amps, control box
etc.

Also another kit-like element was Jon's PPMC controller.

The reason why I am glad that I did not go with a kit is two fold:

1) I know everything about how my mill functions
2) I can add stuff to it, like a rotary indexer, spindle encoder, 4th
axis, etc, as much as I want, and I am not limited by only three
connectors on a "kit".

Adding the rotary indexer took literally one evening. I thought for a
lot longer about it, as you know, but just doing it was borderline
trivial.

Adding a spindle encoder also took 2 months thinking and some aborted
attempts to make a shaft adaptor, but once I made one, it took only
one day (same day as I made the adaptor).

The 4th axis will be harder, due to resolver converter issues,

I greatly doubt that I could do any of this with a "kit".

Furthermore, I bought (for $2) a Saitek P880 joypad at a garage sale.

Wiring it in took a couple of hours, and that was this long only
because I was stupid. I just copied a config from some guy and did a
bad job at this, otherwise it would be one hour.

Now this joypad, is far superior in convenience to any jogging
controls that I have personally seen, which admittedly is not that
many. Could I do it with a kit? I am not too sure, Pete C may have
something to add about that.


From what I've seen there are a lot more turnkey type kits available for
Mach3, i.e. "Mach3 3 axis servo retrofit package for Bridgeport type
mills". With EMC2 there are various compatible modules available, but
few if any turnkey kits packaged with all the components for a common
retrofit.

What this means is that if you want to use EMC2 you have to do more
planning up front to determine the set of "modules" you'll need for the
conversion. You need to select interface cards, power supplies, servo
drives, servo motors, encoders, limit switches, etc. as appropriate for
the machine.

After the upfront planning, I don't think the time to perform the actual
retrofit and get up and running would be much different between the two
since you're doing the same physical work installing and wiring the
components.