Karl Townsend wrote:


1998 huh? That's the year i decided to go Camsoft after switching my
Bandit to Ahha and not liking steppers. I'm suggesting EMC to the kid
as it is SO MUCH more economical. Plus I expect Camsoft to be out of
business in less than ten years.

Now, I REALLY LIKE using Opto 22 brand isolated 24 volt IO and the PCI
bus cards to control them. what are the chance EMC will run this card?
http://tinyurl.com/cjb8ue3
Umm, it was discontinued 6 years ago, and is 5 V PCI ONLY! You may have
trouble finding a motherboard the card will even FIT into the connectors,
now.

My interface boards for LinuxCNC already have optoisolated inputs
built in, and place to plug your SSRs for output. Mesa can interface
to Opto-22 boards, I think. But, you really won't need much digital
I/O on this machine. Spindle forward and reverse, coolant, and
servo amp enable are the outputs, and maybe there is a tool release
cylinder. And, a few limit and home switches for inputs. Does it have
a spindle encoder? If so, then you really want to go with LinuxCNC
for rigid tapping.

Really, the cost of the control program is small. But, with LinuxCNC,
you know you can get stuff fixed, often within a day or two, when a problem
is discovered.

Jon