Hard to see why more than one of these would be needed?
If they are as business critical as they sound it would be worth looking at two of them, taking some time to look at disk imaging / backups & regularly testing the backup system rather than waiting for a failure & trying to remember / conjuring up a process when your backs against it.
Also as the updated cnc is now network attached you’ll need to consider if they go on your business lan with internet connectivity or if you are going to setup a private lan with just the cnc & controlling pc?
The later isn’t hard but there are a few extra setup steps to consider/document.
That chip doesn’t support windows 11, full stop – it’s an arbitary Microsoft decision, the chip is perfectly capable of running windows 11. Probably not an issue for you though as it won’t need to be networked/need security updates in future.
The software supports Windows 2000, I doubt W11 is going to be a requirement any time soon. Though of course, that in itself comes with its own questions.
You’ll need to check it has the serial/parallel ports you require for your CNC interface – they are not always standard ports on most PC’s.
As I understood it, the old system used parallel ports and the replacement system does not. If that's not the case then again a rethink would be needed here. They'll need a 32-bit OS for a start.
All development on Mach3 stopped when Mach 4 was released, but Mach3 is still a very popular option.
Mach4 was a complete re-write by new developers, used a different scripting language, and not all motion controller manufacturers wrote new plugins for Mach4. Uptake in the hobbyist market has been pretty low, as there are lots of other options now, compared to when Mach3 was released.
I don't know which motion controller is being fitted, but they generally are not network connected as such (they can be, but it's definitely not recommended). They get connected directly to the computer to eliminate any latency issues with switches/hubs and avoiding any issues with fighting for bandwidth with other devices.
We’d need the PC by the CNC machine for zeroing the axes every sheet.
You can run, HDMI with embedded data (i.e. mouse and keyboard) over cat5. So if you really wanted to you could put everything in another room, and just put the screen and an KVM switch in the workshop.
But TBH that seems like overthinking it, if the old PC has survived a new one probably will. And a new PC will barely run the fan so won't draw crap in. Just put it on your maintenance to-do list to take the cover off and give it a squirt with an air gun every 6 months.
I'm slowly understanding all this! Decided it might be a good idea to use someone local, so popped to the nearest independent computer place and got this quote:
CiT Tower case (mid-sized)
Intel Core i5 10400 6 Core
Kingston 240GB SSD
8GB DDR4 RAM
H410 Mainboard
500w Power Supply
Windows 10
£399
We'd get two matching ones of these and then swap/clean them on a regular basis and have a box (with plenty of ventilation to the cleaner part of the factory) around them to keep the dust out.
They wouldn't be going on the network and would be running the CNC box via ethernet not a parallel port.
We’d get two matching ones of these and then swap/clean them on a regular basis and have a box (with plenty of ventilation to the cleaner part of the factory) around them to keep the dust out.
I'd not 'swap' them, but assuming that £399 is quite a bit less than the lost income if the machine was offline for a couple of hours/days it's probably worth having a spare with all the same software/drivers installed and ready to go so you can just swap them over and carry on.
Swings and roundabouts. It's not necessary but I figured it was worth ten minutes of faff periodically for the peace of mind of knowing that your disaster recovery policy is solid.
I suppose the million dollar question is, how much downtime is considered acceptable? Seconds, minutes, hours, days? Then work back from there, how do we make that happen.
One of a colleague's pet idioms is, "there's no point in spending a thousand pounds on a lock to the cupboard where you keep the pencils." What that misses of course is, you might have one hell of a lot of pencils...
Swings and roundabouts. It’s not necessary but I figured it was worth ten minutes of faff periodically for the peace of mind of knowing that your disaster recovery policy is solid.
I suppose the million dollar question is, how much downtime is considered acceptable? Seconds, minutes, hours, days? Then work back from there, how do we make that happen.
This in spades.
If there are issues with the ‘backup’ system it’s better to know well in advance of needing to use it with the option of rolling back to the other machine if you do discover an issue & fixing it when it’s not time critical.
One major benefit of using ethernet (and usb) motion controllers, is should something happen to the computer, you can pretty much grab any reasonable computer, install the software, and be up and running again.
I've even run Mach3 on my laptop, just to get a machine running again.
You just can't do that with older systems running a parallel port.
You won't get an off the shelf system with a proper parallel port (it's got to be one that sits on the PCI bus, not a usb converter) quickly now. And then you have to ensure the motherboard/parallel port were up to running a machine, as not all combinations will work, and they require being configured a specific way.
They were revolutionary for DIY CNC machines at the time (90s), but the parallel port is pretty much dead for all but those trying spend the least amount of money possible.
