Recommendations for a practical and complete S/W combination for simple 2d Milling

[ngr1]

I have acquired all of the H/W now and I am reading through the posts on CNCZone to determine which S/W I should acquire. My H/W is as follows:

1) Xylotex XS-3525/8S-3 Three Axis Stepper Driver Board Kit
2) 24VDC/6.5Amp power supply from WWW.MPJA.COM
3) Taig CNC ready mill
4) 125 oz/inch stepper motors

Almost all of my milling will be 2d which means milling flat stock into shapes and drilling holes.

What combination of S/W do you recommend for my proposed milling activity?

Is it practical to think a complete S/W solution can be found for Windows 2000/XP? I am trying to avoid a DOS environment.

Thanks

Norman

[Al_The_Man]

What is your reason on wanting a Win based system?, I have implemented both on CNC mills, my personal preference for a dedicated function like a CNC machine is a well designed DOS system over a win based system, I find that there is not to much to be gained from running under windows.
Al

[ngr1]

Thanks for the feedback Al.

I understand your point so what SW combination do you use?

[Al_The_Man]

Norman, I guess the cheapest way to go would be to operate the system through the parallel port like alot of posters here do, I have never used this type of system so I cannot help there, I use the little more costly aproach of the dedicated servo card type of system such as Acroloop, Galil, Aerotech etc.
If you decide to go this route the hardware comes up on eBay quite frequently.
Al

[dcd121]

Take a look at Deskcnc. Windows environment, and inexpensive yet powerful. A very nice solution in my opinion for what you want to do plus much more. I would buy the deskcnc driver (serial )board to make life easy Software $300, board $50.
Yes I use it. No I am not a salesman.

[Alan T.]

Dolphin Cad/Cam or Vector would be a good low cost choice. I have Dolphin Partmaster myself but am mainly using my new Visualmill 5.0. I understand that Fred Smith who sells Vector is superb for customer service. Both can be had for around $400.00.

AlanT.

[ullbergm]

To controll my cnc I have been using a free package called Linux EMC (http://www.linuxcnc.org) with great success.

Even with little or no linux experience you can install it really easy. they have a boot cd that will install it for you. The only issue is that the configuration is done in a text file, but if thats ok with you its seems to work great for me. And the price is right.