Jim,

I've experimented with touch screens too. With the workshop environemt, greasy fingers, cutting oil mist and all other contaminants, the touchscreens start malfunctioning in a few days. There's an android app for controlling Mach3 PC through bluetooth or WiFi. But I haven't tried that and not sure about it's capabilities.

Zafar

What do most people use as PC's for their mach3 installs. I'm not sure if I'm better off getting a touch screen pc based install and mounting that in the cabinet where my heidenhain currently lives, or just getting my hands on an old panasonic toughbook with touch screen?

I just get a motherboard, memory, hard drive and power supply and fit them into my control panel, that way it makes for a very compact and neat setup, few of my machines use Via Pico motherboards (70mm x 100mm) and the rest have mini ITX motherboards (170mm x 170mm).
I use touch screens on all my machines and dont have a problem other than having to wipe them down with a cloth every now and then so I can see them
 Some are more accurate than others. I have a capacitive one by 3M on the Chiron and its very accurate but my Beaver Mill and Computurn lathe have generic Chinese resistive overlay panels and they are not so accurate but still work well. The wee lathe and the coil winder have capacitive as well but they are actually NCR point of sale computers, they work well also.
Only problem I have had with touch screens is I once had an ELO screen , both monitor and panel were excellent quality but  the touch panel was SAW technology and if coolant landed on it the cursor would follow the coolant, I changed that out for one of the Chinese overlays.
 I have had my touch screens on some machines for probably  10years, maybe more and no problems.
One thing however is I much prefer to have external buttons for most things and the controllers with loads of I/O nowadays makes that possible. I tend just to use my touch screen for things like tapping the MDI so I can enter values or tapping DROs etc etc and I use buttons on my panel for day to day functions (start/stop/hold/reference etc etc).

Hood

Where do you guys buy the buttons for start. Estop etc?

Chalon Components have some decent stuff at decent prices.

Hood

I think I know have all the parts for my conversion, I'll create a build diary as I work through the conversion.

Ok, so no turning back now! I have removed the old heidenhein controller and monitor.

I mangaed to win a touch screen pc on ebay, 15" monitor wil fit nicely on my old enclosure, and I plan to make a tool tray where the old controller was.
I hope the pc will be quick enough, it's a 1gz cpu, with 512mb ram. It's currently running windows 7, although I'm very tempted to install windows XP instead. what are your recomendations, xp or 7?

I've received my CSMIO-IP-A controller, Omron VSD, and new servo's (just for thier encoders).

Last night I tried to remove the encoders from the servo's, to install onto mine, but sadly they are not a direct fit. So I have to replace the servo's also, all was going well until I noticed that the servo's I received did not have tacho's in them, so I manged to move the tacho's from one of my origonal servo's.

I can only assume that I need todo this, as I keeping my origonal bocsh servo drives, which have tacho from the motor??

Do I also need to run a tacho signal to my IP-A?

And finally one thing I'm not sure about is home switches. My bridgeport doesn;t seem to have any on the X and Y axis, only the Z. I can see the limit switches,  but not a home. Are they there and I can't see them, or don't I need them, or do I need to add some??

Cheers

Jim

Did Forbes not give you the Tachs he took off the motor?

The tachs only go to your Bosch drives, the encoders go to the CSMIO/IP-A.

The home switches may have been shared but usually they are separate. Often they are Euchner type switches and there are two in one housing, you should be able to feel two plungers at the back if it is that type.

You could use the Limits as a home but better to have separates if possible. Good thing about the CSMIO is you can home to the index pulse so the switches only have to be relatively accurate as they are just a signal for the CSMIO to start looking for the encoders index pulse.

Hood

no he didn't I'm going to ask him to post them down to me, but I can't get access to my email at the moment

Forbes just  said he had the tachs for all motors except one and included them, sure they were not in the packaging somewhere?
Hood

one servo motor (the green one) still has the tacho in it, the other two didn't. one also had the magnets removed too.