Hi,
I am located in Canaan NH, about 900 miles from you. A long days drive.
My shop is about 3 miles from Jim Colts Garage and 10 miles to Hypertherm.
Jim was my boss when I worked there 16 years ago, so I still bleed Hypertherm Black when cut!!
The SM1000 machine is a slightly newer version of the Metal Master (Jim thats the same one we installed at Hypertherm so long ago).
I just sold one to a customer for $40,000 with a used HT-2000 plasma unit.
Anyway,
MG usually put a Burny DNC 2.8 CNC/Drive unit. As this one has a System 80 then it most likely has a seperate Burny Servopak 150 2 Axis drive box.
It uses 150 Watt DC Brushed Motors. The gearboxes are specu=al units from Bison Gear. The ratio is either 19:1 or 33.9:1. You have to get them from Burny as they were custom made for them. On the other hand the gearboxes are ruged and I have seen them run for years after all their oil leaked out. They are not rebuildable. At about $300 each they are concidered disposable.
The CNC and all the motors plug into it.
It sounds like that part is mostly working.
You can remove the gears from the gear rack and run a program without worring about hitting anyrhing. MG also installed overtravel switches that would stop the machine if it came close to the mechanical limits.
Check to see that they work.
The removable box on the front of the CNC is a Shape Cartridge. This means it is one of the first units made in the late 80's. Spare parts are hard to come by unless you start snapping up old Burny 3's/System 80's on E-Bay. Burny upgraded the internal PC boards a few times and eliminated the Shape Cartridges in the early 90's.
The serial link requires a communications program. Burny had one called DNC.
You can set the internal baud rate, parity and stop bits on the Sys80 and Im told that you can communicate with Hyperterminal, but it is cumbersome. I have never done it.
As fopr software. Croel Draw, AutoCad, CheapCad and all the rest of the CAD (Computer Aided Design) programs help you design your part not cut it.
Your cad progran does not know that you are cutting, grinding, spinning or painting your part.
You need lead in and lead out lines for the Plasma. you cannot start or stop the torch in your part. You will have a larger hole where the torch starts than the actual cut line. The part will be smaller/ (Hole larger) due to the Kerf.
Kerf is the material lost to the cutting arc, think of it as the sawdust when cutting wood.
Kerf offset calculations are done in the System 80 and sometimes in the post processor.
For plasma cutting the torch needs to go in the proper direction for the best cut. CCW for outside cuts and CW for inside cuts.
A Post Processor will convert the dxf or dwg file into a useable machine code.
It will add the lead in and lead out lines, set the proper cut direction
MTC has a post processor and DNC program. It will take your .dxf file and convert it to a file type that the B3 can read. I think this package costs $2,200. Sigmanest also has a similar package/price. Are there cheaper packages, most likely, but I do not know of them.
If you get real busy you can add nesting that makes the most efficient use of your plate, but that is when you get into the $5k and up software.
As Jim said this is an industrial quality machine and not one of the hobby machines. The SM1000 sold for over $80,000 new.
So even if it was free or very cheap to acquire, it may not be cheap to get intop operation.
On the other hand you can expect to run this 3 shifts a day 5 days a week.
With minimal maintenance and cleaning it should run 5-10 more years easily.
I would recommend getting a good industrial quality line filter for the AC in to the machne. This will help the CNC boards to live a much longer life.
As far as the Max-100, make sure you try to keep the torch leads as far away from the motor and encoder leads as you can get. The Air Cylinder is driven by the CNC so you can still use it until you get a real THC.
Put the torch leads to one side of the power track, and all the other cables to the other side.
The Gleeson Reel power track has/had a center divider to help keep the cables straight. Use them if they are still there.
Well hope this rambling on has helped to answer some questions.
Contact me with any questions.
alan@plasmatechnologies.com