Techno Servo controler card Vs Mach 3

[Pplug]

I currently have a standard TechnoCNC lc4896 router. It comes with a servo drive and PCI controller card. The problem is that Techno's control software is garbage! (It doesn't even show where the job or tool is in a preview window!) Has anybody gotten a different software interface for this PCI Controller card?

Here is another doosy- Would I get better performance with Gecko drives and Mach 3?

I have about 6 grand wrapped up in this machine right now with the current setup and would like to see if I can get my money out of it. (The PCI card alone cost me $400!)

I guess the best solution I would like to see is a plugin for mach 3 to interface with the PCI card.

-PPlug

[partsman]

Have you had any luck with this? I also have an LC4896 am also interested in scrapping the Techno software and go with Mach 3. I have not had any problems with the Techno software and it seems to do it's job well but I really like some of the features in Mach a lot better.

[TOTALLYRC]

I would see who actually makes the pci card. If it is a galil product, it is possible that the galil plugin for Mach3 will work., If not drop Brian a line and see what he can do.

[Larken]

We have retrofitted a few techno's with out Viper servodrives and Starcam controller. The customer had the same complaint about the techno controller. you have poor display and control.
The Viper servo drives drive the stock motors very well.

Larry K

[Al_The_Man]

At $400.00 I very much doubt it is a Galil card, unless a used one.
Al.

[Pplug]

I think it was custom made for techno. I think the next thing to do would be to see if the card outputs step and direction signals to the amplifiers. But I don't know how to do that without potentially killing the card.

I bet there would be a market for such a conversion.

[amitgoradia]

The Techno PCI card does not output step and direction signals.

There are multiple versions of the LC machine.

1. LC - this has a short PCI card which acts as a PCI bus extender and the servo magic happens on a controller board external to the PCI card.
2. LC+ -
3. LC X - for both these the PCI card is a long PCI card with 3 or 4 LM628/LM629's on it (Not sure which). This card outputs direct torque commands on the bus connector.

There is a lot of windows kernel level stuff going on in the Techno PCI card driver to be able to reverse engineer it.

So the simple answer is that you cannot use any software other than the one developed by techno.

However, techno does sell an API (VB6 ActiveX control) if someone is willing to develop a better software interface to their routers. However, that API also has severe limitations.

-a

[Pplug]

WOW! That just bites the big one! I have a run of the mill LC with the small card. I guess I'll just have to break down and get the geckos.

[m0m022]

does this work with stepper? openloop system?

[Pplug]

nope, the motors are true servos with a 1000 line encoder in a real closed loop system.