[Justintro8487]

I’ve been thinking about getting rid of my 1995 Mazak mill and upgrading to something newer because of the control being so limited from its age as it has very little memory for complex tool paths and would be extremely expensive to add a rotary which I’m really needing more and more it seems. That being said, machine is paid for and still makes good parts so I’ve been considering retrofitting the controls with something modern and Linux cnc as well as a few others keeps coming to mind.

I have done a centroid retrofit on a hurco knee style mill and learned a lot but I have read Linux cnc would be much more involved. Centroid worked great but was really lacking on the user interface. I see many UI’s have been being developed that run on top of Linux cnc that look really good.

I would like to keep my original 3.5kw Mitsubishi servos and drives which are analog input as they still work great and would be pricy to replace. I see mesa has the 7i77 card for analog output but what I’m not sure about is which motion control card to use. I see multiple variants that work with the 7i77.
What kind of performance can one expect retrofitting with a Linux mesa combination? Plenty of look ahead for high speed tool paths?
Attached some pics of my machine.