Need Help!- Graduate Student help Solidcam -> CNC

[EIUNJ]

I am graduate student at Eastern Illinois University, for my thesis work I am using our CNC (Bridgeport VMC480P3) and solidcam 2010. We have the post processor information from Solidcam but are not able to make the connection between the laptop and the CNC to send the g code. Any help or direction would be of great help to my thesis work. Thanks in advance!

[D-Money]

What kind of connections does your CNC Controller have? Serial? Parallel? USB? Does it have a 3.5" floppy drive or a PCMCIA Card Slot? Does it have 802.11 wireless, or 802.3 ethernet?

Are you planning to run small programs which can fit onto a floppy, or medium size programs (bigger than floppy capacity but small enough to be fully loaded into the CNC memory), or huge programs that need a tethered PC to use DNC mode?

[jalessi]

http://www.compumachine.com/Support/...anual_2006.pdf

[EIUNJ]

I believe we are trying to use a ethernet cable but there may also be a PCMCIA cable as well. As far as program size, we are starting smaller but would eventually like to have the machine hardwired together and utilize DNC.

[D-Money]

Originally Posted by EIUNJ I believe we are trying to use a ethernet cable but there may also be a PCMCIA cable as well. As far as program size, we are starting smaller but would eventually like to have the machine hardwired together and utilize DNC.

If you're going to be connecting directly from the CNC to the PC, you generally can't use a standard ethernet "patch cable" as the "pinout" won't match. You'll either need 2 standard ethernet cables and an ethernet hub, or forget the added expense of a hub, and just use a "crossover cable" that has the correct "pinout" for connecting 2 computers directly to each other, without needing a hub.

PCMCIA isn't a cable, but an expansion card type for laptops (such as PCMCIA modems, network cards, wireless cards, etc.) What you'll see quite often in machine shops is "Compact Flash to PCMCIA" adaptor cards, which lets you take a standard compact flash memory card, and allow you to use it in a PCMCIA card slot.

[EIUNJ]

D money-
I think I'll be investing in the PCMCIA Card as you described...any suggestion on a card that will work with the particular Bridgeprot VMC480p3 and work on a dell M4500? Also would a pcmcia card with a usb adapter be usable as well? Thanks for the help again I appreciate it!

Nick

[D-Money]

Originally Posted by EIUNJ D money- I think I'll be investing in the PCMCIA Card as you described...any suggestion on a card that will work with the particular Bridgeprot VMC480p3 and work on a dell M4500? Also would a pcmcia card with a usb adapter be usable as well? Thanks for the help again I appreciate it! Nick

Nick,

Offhand I don't know the maximum storage limits for a Compact Flash card when used in the VMC480p3. It was suggested to consult the Programmer's Reference guide included on the CD-ROM that came with the system...Not a big help, heh.

What we did here for our non-networked machines was to use a desktop PC with a USB-based Compact Flash card reader to copy the program onto a 2 GB Compact Flash card. We then remove the CF card and place it into the PCMCIA to Compact Flash adaptor, and plug the adaptor into the PCMCIA card slot on the machine in question, usually a Makino v33 Graphite.

[EIUNJ]

Would a pcm card that uses a USB drive work the same as a compact flash card?

[D-Money]

Originally Posted by EIUNJ Would a pcm card that uses a USB drive work the same as a compact flash card?

I've never seen it done, so I can't say whether it would work or not.