Hey Dayton,
Tried the PM but it's not accepting more than 3k chars... Here's a post I sent to another fellow who was thinking about a new CNC control for his J310:
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Happy to help if I can… Sounds like our machines are similar, mine is a 2hp Tree J310 that came with a DP20. Servos are Baldor BIG-MHO 90vdc, amps are Servo Dynamics 1525. My guess is that your machine is similar and if your servos motors and amps are good you should keep them.
In my opinion, if you choose Mach3 or Mach4 for running a servo based machine you need to use dedicated motion control hardware because you must maintain the feedback loop between the control, the amps and the servo motor encoders in order to get professional results and maintain safe control over your machine.
For my retro-fit I choose a motion controller from CS-Labs. Here’s the link:
http://www.cs-lab.eu/en/produkt-7,2-CSMIOIPA_Ethernet_Motion_Controller__10V_6_axis_with_connectors.html
I also purchased an MPG and MPG hardware control from CS-Labs. Link here:
http://www.cs-lab.eu/en/produkt-6,2-CSMIOMPG_Kit_module_and_handwheel_for_all_CSMIO_controllers_types_S_M_A.html
All of the above hardware will set you back about $1,000.00. You will also need a windows PC and a license for Mach 3 or 4 which runs $150. In my case I used a dell all-in-one pc that set me back about $500.00
Another option for you is the KFLOP motion controller from Dynomotion. You would need the KFLOP with Kanalog setup which will set you back about $500.00. Here’s the links:
http://dynomotion.com/KFLOP.html
http://dynomotion.com/Kanalog.html
Dynomotion offers free software (windows application) for CNC control called KMotionCNC and it looks quite nice. They also offer a Mach 3 plugin. I kind of wish I had discovered Dynomotion before I did my retrofit because I like the way their software looks and I would like to have the option of creating custom software for my machine using C rather than the VB scripting supported by Mach. The negative for KFLOP is that the interface is USB rather than Ethernet which is not as robust… Also adding an MPG to KFLOP will not be as “plug and play” as the CS-Labs is…
Other options are:
Vital Systems:
http://www.vitalsystem.com/portal/motion/motion_controllers.php
Galil:
http://www.galilmc.com/motion-controllers
Hope this helps! You can complete the retro-fit yourself as long as you are patient, understand basic AC and DC electrical principals and are able to use a volt/ohm meter. You will find a community of people like us who have or are doing retro-fits on the Mach3 support forums:
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php Look for the forum section “third party software/hardware”
Good luck!
Mike