Piggyback 2 CNC Control Systems?

[Ishtar]

Hi all

I've got a CNC Masters CNC Jr (poison I know). It has a USB breakout board with Gecko 201s on a separate board and proprietary control software. The USB chokes when interpolating commands.

I have a parallel breakout board but I want to get it running ASAP using the existing MPG (uses a serial connection) and driver board.

Is it OK to run the step/dir wires in parallel with the existing system and control it with Mach3 that way? I know if I bump the MPG while a cycle is running it will mess up but my main question is will anything be damaged trying to run 2x controllers at the same time?

It will save a lot of time rewiring and I can get the machine up and running with MPG control in about an hour if I take this shortcut.

When I have more time I can try and get the MPG running through the serial connector on the PC and disconnect the USB breakout board.

Thanks in advance, forgive my ignorance but that's why I'm here.

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[Trialnterror]

Did you ever do this? I have a millwright mega v plasma/router and thought about getting a myplasma controller from proma and jump everything to the proma board so only one board will run at a time. Idea behind this: the millwright isn’t quite set up for plasma yet. So I’d run the Cnc router with the millwright controller then have a switch that turns off the millwright and turns on the plasma controller! Just a thought in my head!

[rodw]

You might consider Linuxcnc becasue of its multi-spindle feature. Its plasmac plasma controller is one of the best out there and supports multispindle to do drilling and engraving on the same machine without changing configs. See Plasma Cutting Primer for LinuxCNC Users