Turning centre retrofit help/project on a Mazak/Yamazaki

[spluppit]

Many thanks for your reply irving,

Currently it's not earning it's keep, It has been pretty much a pile of cast iron in my way for some time. I will elaborate on that if required.

As far as I'm concerned the machine can be down for as long as it takes, if it's 2 years so be it. The only other option is the scrap heap, which would be a crying shame. I have been down the route of having a commercial control fitted to my 3 axis mill as a full retrofit, servos the lot. It's a long story that i don't really wish to go into on an open forum. There is something that may interest you irving, regarding another thread i read about commercial conversational software.


As regards to demand, this is a subject i was going to touch on. I do feel there is a demand, I can not be the only small business that hates commercial controls and the idiotic prices they charge. Plus the problem of no longer available parts and what is available is a fortune + service engineer. I do think anyone that could cobble up a control and all the ancillaries could well find a nice niche. As you say, for another thread.

I know its not as easy as 1-2-3 as you say. I think the thing to remember here is all commercial controls are g code based, every single one uses g code in the back round, that includes all conversational controls. The only difference is they have given a graphical way to input the data so its easy to understand, so rather than having to know what g code you are writing, you get a graphical prompt. Its a little bit like the macro facility in mach 3 (that i have seen) where you can say i want to machine pocket and then configure the macros for all the variables related to a pocket of any given type. Thats all the conversationals are. The g code you guys have on your software has all come from industry standard and it is totally the same.


I know that does not account for integrating hardware and making everything work, but its a start.


I'm in in the Maidstone area of kent.



Kind regards,


Scott