Wireless RS-232 to Hass VF-2

[Gujustud]

Well its been a while since my previous post regarding our old school Haas VF-2 (see post here).

Now we're planning on moving to a bigger shop, where we'd like to get rid of the cable currently connecting the computer in the office to the Haas (has no floppy drive).

With the way technology has changed over time, and reading the name of this forum, and doing my fair amount of reading/searching, what is recommended to do this wireless?

I've look around on the internet searching up various terms (wireless, rs-232, etc), and have come by a ton of different options. Just wanted to know what would be the best to use. We have been using CimcoEdit currently to send all our programs to our Haas.

TIA!

[Dan Fritz]

You'll find a lot of different opinions about wireless. We've done several large-scale wireless DNC installations, and we've found that there are several brands of wireless RS232 devices out there that don't work very well.

The real problem is that a wireless RS232 device uses a wireless Ethernet connection between a serial port in the device and a "device driver" in the PC. If the wireless ethernet connection experiences a momentary "drop", your PC may loose control of the serial port. This can affect serial data transfer, possibly even loosing some data. How the device behaves under real-world conditions depends on how well the device driver is written.

On the other hand, if you put a wireless enabled laptop near the machine, and run your DNC software on the laptop, the process is much different. The entire file is transferred wirelessly to the laptop using TCP/IP, then the serial port in the laptop is used to transfer data to the CNC. This is a much better way to maintain file integrity.

The bottom line is this: If you're cutting an expensive mold in "drip-feed" DNC mode, then you'll want to put a laptop at the machine and use the laptop's serial port for DNC. If you're just uploading or downloading normal size files to the CNC memory, then a good wireless Ethernet device is probably OK. If there is a wireless glitch while downloading to CNC memory, you can always download again, but if you're 4 hours into a 6 hour cutting cycle on a $100,000 part, I would think twice about using a wireless serial device.

The wireless Serial Device Server (SDS) that we like to use is made by Quatech corporation. You can get them direct from several sources, and the model number is SSEW-100D. Look for more information on www.quatech.com. There are cheaper devices out there, but I would avoid them. Also, your choice of wireless access point is very important. Avoid the Linksys WAP-11 like the plague. The WAP-54G is much better.