well after looking into converting the solid mill/drill into a cnc and finding it might just be a bit to much for me until I’ve got some experience under my belt I went of to eBay to see what I could get for my limited budget. And I managed to win this for £840



I’m quite chuffed about my by however I see quite a few problems I’m planning to change with your chaps advice after I get it up and running. The only problem is this is my first ever experience with cnc so I haven’t got a clue what i'm doing. I’m good with AutoCAD 06 and inventor 5 so I would love to be able to work with them formats and dxf's but have no idea on this cnc software
It’s came with something called pc-nc 03 and I’ve done a search and didn’t come up with anything on the forum and after reading the instruction book im now lost it appears to be some really old DOS type software and looks horrid to use.
So I was wondering if you could please steer me in the right direction. I haven’t tried using it with his software yet as he sent a link by email
This one http://rapidshare.com/files/340996632/Pcnc.zip.html
but im not into these sharing sites as I don’t understand them for one and don’t want to get a virus. So I haven’t even tried clicking it yet.
I was wondering if it would be worth while skipping that software and going for something else. I’ve seen a few you tube vids for mach 3 and it looks great nice clear lay out and looked quite impressive even for a beginner like me.
The other option a friend at works has got something called solid works that he draws up in and tells me that it has a cam fairciltity but I haven’t any experience with this only Autodesk cad but if I did go done that route it wouldn’t cost me anything
So I’m just unsure what to do next.
What would your chap’s surrgest for a novice like myself?
Also my laptop that I run my vinyl plotter/cutter of is a DELL inspiron 1300 and only has USB out puts I got around this with my plotter with a conversation cable converting it to 9 pin serial with a little disk that sorted it for me. Would this work for the plotter as that has a big and little serial ports that come with it or is this going to be a dead end as I can’t afford a laptop yet as I’ spent up after buying the cnc or will it be ok to buy another conversation cable


jase