I teach in a Technical High School. I have taught at a State Tech for 20 years now. Prior I worked in Aerospace and Firearms design departments for 21 years. My school is one of 17 schools in our (US) State tech school district. The course is a mechanical-deisgn course centered around CADD use with a bit of CNC programming and other related applications. However our schools machines are old and often outdated. Many depend on outdated operating systems ( windows 7) to run outdated interfaces which depend on parallel port type connections. Thus many of our CNC machines have become unusable.
Recently I purchased a used 5 axis China type 6040 CNC for myself at home. It also has the old interface issues. Thus I discovered Masso. I am not an electronics type person so I'm here to investigate Masso as a solution for myself, and if this works out it can then be duplicated in our shop areas. In my shop alone we have 3 cnc machines which could benefit from such a conversion (2 Isel-DaVinci CNC's - one servo, one stepper, 1 old Shark CNC Router. District wide this would be many more ( there are 17 schools).
My concerns: ease of conversion and also drivers for Mastercam. Our school district uses Mastercam. We have site-licenses for 17 schools and at least 34 shops ( 2 per school, possibly more) On these forums inquiries regarding mastercam post-processors seem to go unanswered. I don't know the difficulty of creating a driver but hope that the driver is achieved. Also there is some discussion regarding backlash compensation lacking in the Masso.
So this is why I'm here and what I'm investigating. thank you.
John
Recently I purchased a used 5 axis China type 6040 CNC for myself at home. It also has the old interface issues. Thus I discovered Masso. I am not an electronics type person so I'm here to investigate Masso as a solution for myself, and if this works out it can then be duplicated in our shop areas. In my shop alone we have 3 cnc machines which could benefit from such a conversion (2 Isel-DaVinci CNC's - one servo, one stepper, 1 old Shark CNC Router. District wide this would be many more ( there are 17 schools).
My concerns: ease of conversion and also drivers for Mastercam. Our school district uses Mastercam. We have site-licenses for 17 schools and at least 34 shops ( 2 per school, possibly more) On these forums inquiries regarding mastercam post-processors seem to go unanswered. I don't know the difficulty of creating a driver but hope that the driver is achieved. Also there is some discussion regarding backlash compensation lacking in the Masso.
So this is why I'm here and what I'm investigating. thank you.
John
