Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: chuckmerja on January 25, 2012, 12:29:00 PM
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I've become sort of competent in turning a drawing thru CAM to GCode and
actually cut the part using MACH3 on our CNC'd Grizzly G8689.
I now want to tackle the Bridgeport unit I bought about a year ago. It was
originally a 1974 series II CNC that has been retrofit with a Centroid CNC4
(CNC4E-B24-MD3-80V serial no 1296 circa 1991). I got out the book(s) for
CNC4 and Cencomm and well, this is going to be a real learning experience.
It looks like I can either enter Gcode directly or via Cencomm (for files
under 24K). My question is, is it feasible/practical to use MACH3 as a
front end for this CNC4 or am I stuck unless I do what I would guess to be a
pretty expensive upgrade?? It appears that the controller is 80286 vintage
- at least there is some documentation for such a MB in the paperwork I
received with the mill. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!
Chuck Merja
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You wouldnt be able to just use Mach, you would need to redo things, whether that was get different drives that would accept Step/Dir or go with one of the devices that can control analogue amplifiers, Galil DSPMC etc.
Hood