Panasonic CF 18 and Mach3

[orkneycrystal]

Hi all
I am new to CNC and Mach3 and would appreciate some help if possible .
I have designed and built a 1200x1200 router and would like to use a Panasonic CF18 laptop just because they are dust proof and have a touch screen.
Does anyone have experience using a cf 18 and Mach3 .
I live in the Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland so you can imagine there is not a lot of help to be found locally.
I have had my own business engraving glass, crystal, stone and some metals for around 18 years and wanted to try something different.
I served my time as a wood machinist more years ago then I want to admit and thought with my engraving experience mixed with a CNC router I may be able to make some interesting products.
Any help would be appreciated
Kind regards Stuart

[louieatienza]

Hi all
I am new to CNC and Mach3 and would appreciate some help if possible .
I have designed and built a 1200x1200 router and would like to use a Panasonic CF18 laptop just because they are dust proof and have a touch screen.
Does anyone have experience using a cf 18 and Mach3 .
I live in the Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland so you can imagine there is not a lot of help to be found locally.
I have had my own business engraving glass, crystal, stone and some metals for around 18 years and wanted to try something different.
I served my time as a wood machinist more years ago then I want to admit and thought with my engraving experience mixed with a CNC router I may be able to make some interesting products.
Any help would be appreciated
Kind regards Stuart

Hi and good luck... The CF18 is a notebook? If so, you may run into problems since Mach3 relies on the timing of the CPU to generate pulses and the power-saving features of laptop CPUs can disrupt that. Then again you may not. You could use something like a SmoothStepper which is USB and offloads that task from the CPU...

[lazorus]

I believe that unit doesnt have the 25 pin printer port, but you could probably use a usb card set up like louieatienza suggests. I dont have any experience with usb, but i do have a Toughbook CF28 touchscreen which runs my current setup, with Mach3 and a G540. I havent had any problems with it so far, with about 50 hours run time on it. I do keep having wierd issues on start up with Mach3, sometimes it wants to start up with a really small screen. I just shut it down and restart, the problem goes away. Theres probably a setting or driver corrupted in my system that I need to repair.

[crane550]

I think the Ethernet smoothstepper might be an even better option, as the USB in theory can have issues. This is a whole different topic that has been hashed out many times, but it's just an idea for you. Check out :: CNC4PC :: iNtRo.


Alex

[orkneycrystal]

Many thanks for all your replies , is the smoothstepper a reasonably simple connection process or is it something an engineer would have to do for me?
I am about as electronically minded as a fish !
I will be running 5 stepper motors (two on the Y axis) and I will be having a 4th axis rotary table in the future, would that cause any problems?
Regards Stuart

[johnmac]

I have tried the driver test ( part of Mach 3) on both a CF27 and Cf28, and they both had spikes and dips in the graph. There is no way to completely turn off all of the power management on these two models. I also found that the touch screen is too small, and difficult to use. Also, for a 5 axis machine, I think you would need a second parallel port for the extra pins. So a smoothstepper would be a good option. That is, if your CF18 passes the driver test OK.

John

[johnmac]

I have tried the driver test ( part of Mach 3) on both a CF27 and Cf28, and they both had spikes and dips in the graph. There is no way to completely turn off all of the power management on these two models. I also found that the touch screen is too small, and difficult to use. Also, for a 5 axis machine, I think you would need a second parallel port for the extra pins. So a smoothstepper would be a good option. That is, if your CF18 passes the driver test OK.

John

[HorridHenry]

Mach3 is not USB compatible.

[louieatienza]

Mach3 is not USB compatible.

It is via SmoothStepper and plugin, which BTW is also now ethernet-compatible

[HorridHenry]

It is via SmoothStepper and plugin

So how does that work then? since the only ports to change in Mach3 is parrallel ports.

[louieatienza]

So how does that work then? since the only ports to change in Mach3 is parrallel ports.

The pulse generation is handled by the SmoothStepper, which has its own parallel port outputs that connect directly to your drive, breakout board, etc.

Many here use it with Mach3, so it obviously works. But don't take my word for it, search the forum for threads with it, and check out YouTube for videos. This is NOT a USB to parallel port dongle.

Warp9 Tech. Design - Home of the SmoothStepper - Home

[HorridHenry]

Hah so its a plugin for Mach3 by the makers of that board,one wonders why Mach3 developers have not done this?

It also states that the board aleviates the CPU usage getting taking up normally by Mach3....well duh! USB does use CPU considerably.