We are a small manufacturing company machinging parts out of aluminum and laminated Phenolic. We have a Haas VF0E with an HRT-210 rotary, and a TL-15 dual spindle lathe with live tooling, live "C", and a bar feeder, and are converting as much of our production over to these machines as possible.
We still run four knee mills (3 Laguns & 1 Bridgeport) with Crusader 2 controls, and have around a hundred production programs. With our dust collection system for Phenolic, and considering some of the drilling and tapping we do, we will probably use the knee mills for a long time yet. The conversational language has been a plus, being a little easier to understand for new operators, and the Anilam conversions with glass scales have proven to be pretty reliable and accurate.
We have setup manuals and mini-tapes - a solution thathas worked pretty well over the years. However, we are now down to one working tape reader, and the tapes which are no longer available, are degrading as well. Now we're on borrowed time....
We have been attempting to establish RS-232 communication to use DNC. There are several different cable recommendations floating around (found via google search) with the most common being a null modem cable. We have been unable to get any communication with that configuration.
A straight through DB-25 to Dsub9 cable has allowed the transmission of gibberish from the control to the PC, no matter what I've set the parameters at (baud rate, parity, stop bit, flow control etc.). I've tried Predator, ConnectCNC, and a DOS COMM program.
If anybody has experience with this, I'd appreciate any help! It's hard to find anybody who even knows what a serial cable is any more!
Regards,
JB