Upgrade from CNC7 to CNC11 worthwhile?

I recently acquired my first CNC mill. It's a Series I Rigid-Ram Bridgeport that had an Ajax conversion installed back in 2003. The conversion included servos to replace the steppers, and replaced the BOSS control with the Ajax SERVO3IO board. The system is running CNC7 on an old Pemtium 386 PC. DOS-based but with Windows95 running in the background.

The mill is fully functional (at least it was before the move, haven't gotten it all back together yet). I spoke to the folks at Ajax to see what I could do to upgrade the PC-side of the system to obtain CNC11 and Mach3. I already own a license of Mach3 and run my CNC lathe through that, and would like to try the mill controls.

Ajax says the best option is to swap out the machine side SERVO3IO board for the new ALLIN1DC, and then I can just put together a tower of my choice without the need for a PC card. Sounds like a great option, but it's pricey. I'm trying to better understand what true benefits I'd get from this upgrade to justify the cost. This is difficult because I can't find much info on CNC7 to compare to the listed features of CNC11. DXF Import is something I think I could make good use of, which is one of the major reasons I'm considering the upgrade. That, and my concern about how much life is left in the 386 PC.

Anyone done this conversion, or has experience with both CNC7 and CNC11?

here are a few i can think of off the top of my head
- cnc11 runs on windows 7 or 8.1 so all kinds of advantages come along with windows, easy networking, easy file transfer, easy internet remote support
- cnc11 does not plug into the motherboard like cnc7, cnc11 is built into the servo drive itself. so you won't be stuck using a motherboard with a certain type of slot, any decent pc with a single thread bench mark above 1000 will run cnc11 (the "all in one DC" cnc control board)
- cnc11 has a bunch of CNC software features that were previously optional..now as standard
- you will be able to update cnc11 as new software updates come along..so you won't be stuck
- better screen resolution and graphics than cnc7
- many many improvements and added features to the centroid cnc software in cnc11
- you can easily switch between Mach3 or CENTROID CNC software on the same machine, same computer, same setups. (you can run either or both if you like) best of both worlds
- all in one DC has extra encoder inputs for MPG or scales or other uses

Sorry - just realized this post was last January. Anyhow still useful if you have your PC die on a cnc7 system.

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I have a cnc router with and M39/ cnc7 set up(which is relatively unusual in itself) and I am often mull over this question. But basically until something becomes unfixable I will likely stay at cnc7. As far as the PC is concerned, get the hard drive imaged asap. If that goes, you're hooped. If the PC motherboard goes it is an easy fix. I had mine go and basically I found a hobby computer guy with a computer that had an ISA slot and we dropped the card in, dropped the hard drive in and it was done. Really that simple!

I now also have an image of that drive in case it is the drive that fails and not the motherboard. I also bought a floppy emulator USB drive. It still holds the same amount of data as a floppy but with the reliability and convenience of the USB stick (and it at least loads fast on the design computer, but still floppy speed on the cnc7 computer).

If I had to upgrade it would likely be to one of the more recent versions that use linux but that do not require the new board. Those upgrades are just the software and should get you 75% of the way there at much less cost.

Oh and I should mention I have the m39 setup that had the control computer in the cabinet but now (unfortunately due to the switch of motherboards/pc's) has the computer hanging on the outside of the cabinet with a new hole in the cabinet to run the wiring out to the PC. So its a total cludge but it did get 15 year old tech working again in about 4 days.



GF