Any options for an old mill?

[bjorn]

Hello all!

I´m having quite an odd problem (I think) with an old cnc mill. The system is an educational system built by Cybernetic Applications that includes a few robot arms called Mentor, Serpentand and a mill called Cyber mill. The thing is that this system was bought to our school back in the 80:s and the software controlling theese robots has been run on an old 286 up to now. I am only interested in getting the mill working and I have been in contact with Cybernetic for software updates. They provide a new software called WALLI for windows but it is not compatible with the old mill and the old interface called Turbo board (which I think is parallel). The milling in the new WALLI as in the old software is performed by G and M codes.

As the old software is quite outdated I would like to be able to run a newer one that could import Gerber and Autocad files. Anyone had a similar problem and could point me in the right direction? Is it possible that I could run another CNC software and connect the mill to the parallelport or do you think that the Turbo board and the mill is using some odd data instructions?

Any help appreciated
Best regards,
Bjorn

[Torsten]

Not knowing the specifics of your particular machine the methodes used in
many older machines where of a very proprietary nature.
This means they are somewhat expensive to convert to a more generic
step and direction control and you are stuck with the software it has.
Unless it is broke and you don't have a choice.
But you mention it dose run standard G and M codes there is a good chance
you can still use the software that translates Gerber and autocads dxf files
to G-code in a seperate Program and then run that on your machine.
Good Luck