Proto Trak?

[Garage Shop]

Is there a section for Proto Trak chat?

Or does anyone know of a Proto trak forum?

Thanks guys,

Mike

[Garage Shop]

Nothing?

Am I the only Prototrak owner on this board? You have to be kidding me.

[chaterlea25]

Hi There,
My name is John from southern Ireland and am a newbie to cnc machining,
My interests are mainly restoring vintage motorcycles and so need to produce parts for them.
I have many years experience of electrical control systems, and all the process controls involved in power generation, so I hope I have a good understanding of the "logic" involved
Of course everyone who designs a power plant control system seems to use their own language and so editing and modifing the logic is a pain as no one can remember the steps involved without the relevant manual to hand.

About a year ago I aquired a 10x50 ACER mill that had been fitted with Proto trak mx3. The company removed the mx3 from the mill to keep as spares for a sister machine, then a few months ago I got a call from them to say come and collect the mx3 gear
I had installed the Acer in my workshop and had got it running in manual mode
with the aid of an "Orion" drive.
This gives me 220v 3 phase with variable frequency, soft start, and with motor overload protection as well. I needed 60hz as the motor is American spec.
Now I am refitting the mx3 gear (separate 110v supply) and would like to hear from people out there what can I expect from mx3 ????

Can I generate drawings, g code and whatever else i need and input this to mx3 or am I limited to the built in functions of mx3??
What software and hardware are compatible or required to make it work??

By the way my email name comes from one of my current restoration projects
that I need to produce many parts for.
Best Regards
John O Regan

[Stillearnn]

Hi Mike and John,

Im a 10+ year user of Prototrak units MX2,MX3, Age3 and I own my own my own Mx3 unit on 2J bridgeport

The Prototraks use a modified Fanuc 6M control. Your CAD program needs to "post process" the G&M codes according to the conventions of the 6M code. Then once on a floppy disc you install the program into the machines memory. Once there you can edit it just like you had manually input all those events.

I used Teksoft CAD/CAM software for many years, but in the last few have switched to Mastercam. Both of those companies supplied the required post processers.
Hope some of this is usefull
Stillearnn

[Jeff Peterson]

With mastercam and a bridgeport with mx3 I have been able to send my program from the mill to the computer but I can not send a file from my computer to the mill. I have tried working with southwest industries but they have no solution for me. I spent a lot of time working with there tech support but no success. Anybody got any advice?

[ImanCarrot]

You can tranfer using a floppy but MUST rename the file to numbers and have a .CAM extension otherwise it'll not be read (eg 12345678.CAM)

Apologies if you've done this, just trying to help.