Vertical Mill - $300 Craigslist

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How much do you charge them for the gear you make?

:)

--Winston

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--Winston

It would be great if you could find one for me, you certainly have the knack for finding them, even a small VMC would be nice if the price was right. The Kitamura Mycenter 1s I used to work on were a nice size to fit a larger home shop. I have no problem running EMC2 for a retrofit, it didn't exist when I did my CNC shoot-out between EMC and MACH2, if it had I may have gone with EMC2.

It's been around 60F here, with a few 70F days. 70F is my bitch threshold.

This might come through a few times, or not at all *sigh* NEWS server issues...

It would be great if you could find one for me, you certainly have the knack for finding them, even a small VMC would be nice if the price was right. The Kitamura Mycenter 1s I used to work on were a nice size to fit a larger home shop. I have no problem running EMC2 for a retrofit, it didn't exist when I did my CNC shoot-out between EMC and MACH2, if it had I may have gone with EMC2.

"Pete C." fired this volley in news:4f41835d$0$21187 $ snipped-for-privacy@newsreader.readnews.com:

You need to review your research. From all I can tell, Mach2 is a proprietary version of EMC, and appeared well after EMC first came out.

Lloyd

Got it...

You guys should see what I was watching over the past few days. Eleven axes; you set the pallet changer to load on Tuesdays, and you ship parts with around 50 machined features, on five sides, on Thursdays. Complete SPC reports are packed with each carton of parts. No lights are needed in the shop.

Do they print UPS labels automatically too? This is what I am working on. Right now I print labels by hand using paypal website, which is very time consuming and inefficient. I want to write a script to print mailing labels, and, when possible, pick between USPS flat rate boxes and UPS, for lower shipping cost.

I don't think so, but ask Fanuc. They may have an app for that. d8-)

Have you looked through the UPS and USPS websites? They may have something. They're always trying to out-automate and out-convenience their competitors.

I had one years ago for FedEx that was pretty automatic, as I recall.

You would enjoy seeing those machines, Iggy. If you're free for a couple of hours on the afternoon of Feb. 29th, I may be able to get you into a press conference in Schaumburg, to see some pretty slick stuff. One machine base, up to 16 mill/drill heads and two turning spindles. Robotic loaders and more. This is the kind of machine that explains why, even while manufacturing is doing well, no people need apply.

EMC was originally a NIST project / product and is open source. MACH2 is based on EMC ported to a windows platform and with a much improved user interface. MACH2 predates EMC2 by quite a bit, EMC2 was being planned when I was testing EMC vs. MACH2. EMC2 fixed the bad UI in EMC and now it is pretty comparable to MACH3 (current version, MACH2 is old) as far as the UI and overall ease of use as far as I can tell without having done a shoot-out between them.

With what it costs, I'm sure you can't afford the lights anyway...

That would be extremely interesting.

Ok. I'll be in touch as plans unfold. I'm scrambling to help put this together.

Not as bad as I thought, actually. This one was around $350,000, and it replaces at least three or four conventional CNCs. And that includes the loading/unloading robotics.

This machine is not unique, BTW. I just wrote an article about similar machines from Mazak, Okuma, and others. This is a big part of metalcutting's future.

O.K. But with hamfest material for the computer parts (e.g. a nice rack-mount chassis with filtered airflow) it is less expensive. And replacing the CPU in the old LSI-11 controller for my BOSS-3 did not fix it -- nor did replacing any of the other related boards. It had a serious case of electronic Altzheimer's -- within fifteen to thirty seconds after a reset, it would lose track of what it was doing. Power supply voltages all checked out fine. Connectors checked out fine. The only thing left was the rather custom backplane -- one Q-bus slot for the four-wide version of the LSI-11, and four custom Bridgeport slots. I was never able to find where the problem was. So, I opted to go for th e EMC2 package (at the time), and while I was about it, I opted to change from steppers to servos -- and that is where I am now hanging, waiting to weld up a replacement mount for the Y-axis servo motor. (At least I now have welding capability, so it can progress once the weather is better for outdoor TIG welding. (The servo motors are longer than the steppers, and won't fit into the cavity in the knee which clears the stepper.

One problem -- I need the hub out of the failed one to complete it. Unless I make myself a double-D broach to make them without the old hub.

Then, I would have to get an eBay account and a PayPal account. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Hmmm ... a thought, if I made myself a broach to make the double-D hole in the center of the hub. I guess that I should look at what they charge for the NOS ones which they have. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

:)

--Winston