Communicating with mills

[due]

The IS department is looking at giving me a different PC. I told them it needs an "A" drive and a serial port to talk with my mills. They pulled a nose and said this is outdated technology. My mills only have an RS232 port or a floppy drive. Does anyone have a way to update machines to use flash drives or some other way to transfer data to the mills?

[Pilot Plant Supervisor]

Check out Shop Floor Automations. They sell Ethernet and USB boxes that will work on any machine. http://shopfloorautomations.com/page/shop-floor-ethernet-portable-pdas-hhts-units/

[due]

That looks very promissing, thank You very much. My machine tool seller did not know where to start.

[YoDoug®]

The IS department is looking at giving me a different PC. I told them it needs an "A" drive and a serial port to talk with my mills. They pulled a nose and said this is outdated technology. My mills only have an RS232 port or a floppy drive. Does anyone have a way to update machines to use flash drives or some other way to transfer data to the mills?

 

LOL, send your IS guys a quote for a couple of Okuma mills with PC based network ready controls. When they see the price tag I bet they will find you a floppy drive and serial card pretty darn quickly.

[ERIC14779]

USB External Floppy Drive ???

[Craig-B]

Try,

www.FloppytoUSB.com

 

http://www.express-inc.com/Moxa_NPort_W2150_2250_Plus_s/1054.htm

 

http://www.highlanddnc.com/

[Cannon]

Or you could go wireless. We have Moxa wlan boxes hooked to rs-232 ports in the mills and lathes. Then you need wlan router and Cimco dnc-max or some other software to communicate.

[JAMMAN]

I use Sabrent products for usb to rs232/db9

 

Awesome cross platform compatibility, I have used them to talk to CNC's, managed switches, managed power supplies, you name it. Plug and play in linux, I haven't tried it in 7 but it works with XP if you download a driver.

 

http://www.sabrent.com/category/cables/CB-RS232/

 

Cheap also, I forgot the model of the one I have but I believe it was less than 20 bucks. I haven't tried multiples but with USB hubs cheap I bet you could set up unlimited virtual com ports.

[John@WMM]

We also use wireless Cimco dnc-max with Moxa boxes hooked to rs-232 ports on 20 mills and 2 wire edms. This setup has worked very well for us.

[Nils N]

We use a either net cable connected to out network and right into the machine, we can see the files on our computer and drop and drag to transfer files form computer to machine. Only problem we've run into now is with Windows 7. Windows7 does not support the netbeui protocol so now I have my old xp computer sitting next to the new Win 7 and transfer from 7 to xp to machine. Does take much longer but it is a hassle.

 

We've tried setting up a virual computer on the win 7 but having been able to make it work, so until we do I'm stuck with the three way transfer.

[#Rekd™]

In Windows7 there is an option to for compatability (previous versions of windows)instead of running virtual machine. I had to do this with the DMG FTP protocol as it would not work in virtual machine.

[#Rekd™]

Just right click on the shortcut or the exe file and select properties. Then select compatibility.

 

[Nils N]

Just right click on the shortcut or the exe file and select properties. Then select compatibility.

 

 

Are you saying to do this when installing Windows 7 from the disk, or can it be done with windows 7 installed? Plus you given me some hope this will work. BIG Thanks in advance

[#Rekd™]

With Windows7 installed.

[Nils N]

Well I did that and I'm not seeing what I need to in order to connect to the cnc. I tried remapping the drive to get a shred folder but it comes up the same 'windows cannot access \\cnc\quintax'

 

I have shared folders on old XP computer to \\cnc\quintax but can't from win 7

any ideas?

[#Rekd™]

Can you ping the ip of the machine from your computer?

[Nils N]

no I can't I don't know the ip. It's showing up as a drive but not a shared folder as you can see in the attached pic. Not sure how to find the ip of the cnc

[DavidJackson]

there is a recent thread about making netbeui work in virtual machine,

from memory, pretty much goto virtual machine settings, network driver = native, and disable tcp/ip in the virtual machines network manager (&install the netbeui drivers) and it will work. this is not the right way but it will work.

[Aaron Eberhard]

Nils - I don't know what control or OS your control runs, but I've ran across this before, does it look promising at all?

Sevenforums.com

 

Our controls run either Linux or Windows, so networking hasn't ever really been an issue for us, but I used to dabble quite a bit in networking in general. Gotta love equipment from before standardized/dominate protocols were established!

 

As was mentioned above, you may be able to get there by typing //xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/quitax instead (the xxx is the IP address). If you can't find the IP address on the control (I may be able to help you if it's not a completely proprietary OS), then you can find it by the router. Log into your router and look at your DHCP client list, and it will show you what IPs it's assigned and to "whom." So as long as the control has TCP/IP, you can probably share that way as well.

[Ron Roderick]

Try this ftp server to send your files via a network connection with Windows 7. It was free and did the trick sending files by FTP over our network

 

http://www.xlightftpd.com/