Hello All !

I am new here and I am looking for help to gt my CNC router to do what it was supposed to do;  full 3D milling.
I have a GALIL 1832 card running the interface which is currently 'VISIONCAM'.  The program was designed around the
Galil platform but was never completed.  It is a great piece of software for FCO or 2.5D applications. But.....I want to carve.
I heard about the Mach 3 software but haven't gotten the full scoop.  Any info is helpful.
Thanks,
Roman aka: RAP

I don't really know what you want to know - I have looked at the Galil 1832 card and as far as I can see this card fits inside the P.C. and then drives your motor amp/driver cards. It quite clearly generates much of the signal pattern for the motors.

Mach 3 on the P.C. does away with the Galil 1832 card as far as I can see. It generates the control signals.It provides step and direction control for each axis (which connect directly to the axis motor driver cards, a step/direc or a PWM signal for spindle control, and input/ouput lines for limit switches, coolant etc.

The output from the computer is via the 25 pin printer port (LPT1), or the latest card is a USB decoder, which connects to your computers USB port and decodes the signals. (This card generates the pulses for the various motors, taking away some of the work from the host PC.)

Mach 3 is a full featured CNC program. You can download a version to test and inspect. That is also full featured, but only runs 500 lines of code - which is you are doing pictures of a ship on a choppy sea, will soon be used up.

What else do you want to know - what is you mill, and how is it run - servo's, steppers - limit switches, spindle control  ??

Mach has a plugin for Galil, but not sure what yours is. The plugin for Mach is for the DMC series of Galil cards.
Hood

Thanks for that Hood, I thought there might be one !!

Thanks for responses guys.  Ok....so if I understand you correctly. I can remove the DMC1832 and replace it with a USB decoder card?  Do you supply this card?  If so what is the cost?  Apparently I would need this before installing the demo of Mach3. Also, I understand what you are saying about the limitations IE: 500 lines, though I'm not really sure what that means to me in 'real world' modeling.  Is there a way to increase the resolution for more advanced machining? Buffer of a sort?   My machine is a stepper motor model BTW. It is a 5' x 10' flatbed 'router'.  Also, what OS does this program run from?  XP?  Vista?  Don't laugh but....My system is running on Win 98 with a whopping 166mhz processor under the hood!!  Guess I will need an upgrade? lol.  Any help is appreciated as I am 'working around' many issues with control right now.
Thanks,
RAP

Had a look and your card may well be a DMC series, if it is then you can download the plugin and use Mach with the hardware you have. There will possibly be some setting up involved in the plugin, defining pins etc but I am not sure as I have never had a Galil.
 You will definitely need a faster computer I am afraid, for Mach using its pulse engine 1Gig is really a minimum, as the Galil will do the motion control then you may get away with less than that but still think you will need a bit faster than you have at the moment
 As far as OS is concerned, Mach runs on Win 2000, XP or Vista, would shy away from Vista myself as I dont like it and there have been problems with using it. The guys that do use it seem to have gotten most of the issues sorted so a bit of research in the Vista part of the forum would probably sort you out if you were determined to use Vista.

Hood