On Jul 17, 10:42 am, "Pete C." wrote:
Karl Townsend wrote:

Out of curiosity, why do you need a P4 system to run a knee mill? I run
my CNC'd little mini mill on a P3 and it has no performance issues. If
you need ISA, presumably you're using a fancy servo controller card
which probably offloads even more load from the system CPU.

I use Camsoft. There is a Galil card on an ISA slot to run real time motion
control. I've used a P3 for years, its been marginal but I got by. The new
version 16 needs more computer and I'm adding analog pots for feed and
speed. These are continuously monitored and take a lot of computer
resources. And, I run mastercam on the same box. This app. needs WAY more
horsepower than I got. Didn't mention it, but I plan to try a serious AGP
video card to help out.

Karl

Dunno, I run Mach3 just fine on a P3/700 and W2K and it doesn't have
fancy motion control cards to offload from the system CPU. It monitors
various inputs continuously just fine, including a spindle tach photo
sensor which gives it a signal that ranges up to about 60Hz.

I'm thinking something is either poorly written or poorly configured, or
you have excess junk running on the system that doesn't need to be there
if a P3 is having trouble keeping up. It's a knee mill, not an ultra
high speed 5 axis machining center after all.

That last part is your real problem, your CAD/CAM needs to run on a
separate high end machine, preferably not in the shop either. My CAD
runs on a P4/3GHz in the house, same machine I do video stuff on. I just
grab the files over the net from the shop computer or the CNC computer
as needed.

Pete C.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I would agree with Pete....dedicate the CAD/CAM to a different
computer and your throughput problems will go away.

Many people dedicate a ISA older computer to be the "controller" for a
CNC system since it is much more cost effective than updating to a non-
ISA controller card.

I also would not have your CAD system in a shop environment...too many
things there to take your computer (and files) down. Having your CAD
machine in a friendly environment separate from the shop is cheap
insurance against file loss.

TMT