Hi, a question for the community.

Hi, a question for the community. I’m quite new in this world, but i have three oldish cnc controllers with proprietary cnc mechanics. One of them for instance is the built-in controller on a max nc 10. I want to control these possibly with mach 3 on Windows. Maybe there are other ways. To make mach 3 run stable I would need a usb based hardware controller, like the HyTech from http://hytechworks.com. Maybe there are others. Are there any advise on a solution to run different cnc’s from a pc and some cheap middle hardware…Thanks.

Forgot to specify that all three controllers are db25 parallel port based.

If you want to keep the db25 based controllers, a Smooth Stepper or Gecko Drive may works for you.

Hi, I searched using @Marcus_Wolschon keywords and found lots of interesting stuff. But it’s all quite pricy compared to the hytech (smooth stepper) item I linked to before. Is there anything I should be aware of when selecting a smooth stepper for mach 3.

Max nc supposedly can be run from a Linux CNC (EMC2) setup. I have a NC10 that I have been meaning to try, but haven’t yet. So take this with a grain of salt.

I got it to run with a laptop with built in parallel port. All seems to run smoothly, but I have not yet had a tool mounted. Still the motors are humming sweetly running from end to end on their available range. It’s actually reasonable in speed without load.