Retrofitting a Monarch CNC Mill

[tobybirch007]

A friend of mine has a Monarch Series 10 CNC lathe with the control cabinet. The problem is someone cut the cable joining the two. He asked me if it would be possible to retrofit it to run off of a PC. I assumed there is and told him I would check it out.

I would like to use linux with emc2 if possible, but I'm open to other ideas as well. Another possibility is to rewire the original control cable and use a PC to drip the cnc code to the controller. We had a Kitamura milling machine that operated this way when I was in college, I just don't have the slightest idea on how to do it.

What do you guys think?

[WGoyer]

Drip feeding is available for nearly any N/C or CNC ever made and would certainly be the quickest and least expensive way to get this machine running. It is too bad that it has been allowed to sit out so long, because Monarch built beautiful machines.

Monarch is still around, so I would think that buying the prints and fixing the cut cable would be possible.

Do you know what CNC it has? Monarch was probably using GE and Allen Bradley in 1983.

Warren
www.uptimecorp.com

[Karl_T]

May be more than you want to spend. A Camsoft refit would make this machine better than new. The software is $5K and you could spend $10K on hardware, especially if your existing drives can't be used.

Karl

[tobybirch007]

I'm pretty sure I saw an allen bradley badge on the control cabinet, but not positive.

I would like to do the camsoft route, but neither of us can afford that right now, maybe in the future though.

I think I'll be trying the drip feed option.

Thanks for your input guys.