Alpha 550

[astrocncdept]

Hey All

 

I am woundering if anyone out there is using MasterCam Lathe X3 on Am older Alpha 550 Lathe. If not,does anyone know if I can uase Mastercam on this Lathe.

 

 

Thanks

 

Ken

[Guest]

If it uses gcode, I don't see why it probably couldn't be done.

 

Do you have a snippet of code?

[astrocncdept]

The Alpha uses some type of an encryption, Had our resaler hear to demo lathe X3. He wasn't sure if we could. He asked us to contact Alpha. Easyer said than done, bought the machine in 1997. There doesn't seem to be any support/ very little. I will try to post a sample of the code from the Lathe

 

thanks

 

Ken

[Steve@Cimco]

I think I managed to reverse engineer the code for one of those (not sure if it was a 550)but it was a long time ago and produce a post in v9 or v8. The first time we ran the code it made the operator jump as the machine ran fully automatic and it wasnt supposed to. I think this was one of the reasons Harrisons didnt like to give out too much info but the code was plain text so it wasnt hard. I will try and find the old post.

[astrocncdept]

Steve

If you could find that old post I would greatly appreciate it. That will give us a starting place. I have had some post training, & I have wrighter past for hurco's in the past.

 

thanks

 

Ken

 

P.S. you can email me @ [email protected]

[Todd Tracey from Fastech]

I called Alpha/Harrison in England a while back about one at OSU. They told us to forget it as it couldn't be done at least on the model they bought.

[Jimmy Wakeford from Barefoot CNC]

I done a post for it in v8, and have updated since, it was special to say the least

[Cannon]

We have the Alpha 550 and it actually has a fanuc control (6t?) but Harrison has made their own interface on top of it. Here where I work, we still program it with the AlphaCam that came with the machine. I once open the code in a text editor and for me, it looked like a bunch of variables. I know a place that uses mastercam to program the same kind of machine so it can be done.

[astrocncdept]

Jimmy

 

I am glad to hear a MasterCam post can be written. As I said before we want add MasterCam lathe. I may be contacting you in the future for some post help.

 

 

Thanks

 

Ken Kreitz

CNC Mang./Faro app. Eng.