I'm currently fitting a galil/mach combo to a woodworking machine (one router spindle, 10 vertical drills, 6 horizontal drills, grooving saw, 7 position tool changer), and I've just reached the point of controlling the three axes by mach (rapids at 65 (2560 inches)/min!). I really like the fact that with the galil plugin, mach is operating as the front end of a proper industrial control.
I also have a plasma table that runs off an old Burny 2.5 control, which works fine, but I find it limiting because the memory is so small, and it's really slow to download and calculate kerf offsets etc. I also want to add a torch height control, and I am attracted by candcnc's integrated mach solution, but I feel like it'd be a backwards step (no pun intended..) to remove the closed loop control and replace it with a parallel port solution- I'd really like to run it off a galil and retain the current drives and servos, but the integrated THC products don't work with the galil plugin.
The candcnc THC uses the serial port to relay arc volts etc back to mach- wouldn't this be relatively straightforward to do via the galil plugin, using one of the analogue inputs on the galil? I'm speaking from (my usual!) position of almost total ignorance about mach and the galil language, but in principle the THC is just an ADC (with all the noise supression etc around it), isn't it?
If Tom Caudle at candcnc did a galil-plugin version of his THC, surely it would be an extremely attractive retrofit for all the thousands of commercial servo-based plasma tables already out there (particularly since the existing analogue drives could be retained)?
X and Y axes, as well as an integrated servo-driven torch lifter, all controlled by the very fast bombproof galil.... I'd buy one. Please Tom!