My first post. We have a 4 bay 2 head router used to fabricate vinyl fence posts. Its a product router that usually should be running most of the day every day. The new ones are roughly $80-100k from SSD control or cmm. I bought a used one with old dc servor motors and line drives and an Allen bradley controller. The unit is currently down due to some unknown electrical issue and I feel like I’m throwing good money after bad playing wacka mole with fixing issues in these older systems I really want to convert this machine to something like PWN as the tech support for these units is remote and pricey from the manufacturer and they don’t have nearly the features of something like the masso.
What are the forums thoughts on running this for a production system? Anyone doing it? My alternatives are to send my unit back to the manufacturer for a full upgrade at probably 5x-6x the cost plus freight. Id ideally like to be able to apply the same playbook again as we expand our needs.
Here is my current unit. XY access on screw drives. The dc motors are nema 23 hookups.
Z is pneumatic with mechanical limit. Our routing needs are currently 2d with a manually adjustable table height and pneumatic material clamps that auto center the posts for faster production.
Hello Asapfence, We are absolutely here to help where we can. I’m not familiar with the vinyl fence posts router but if it’s close to what i’m imaging it should just be a simple CNC machine with a specialized purpose.
I’ve actually been exploring the option of designing a purpose-driven machine specifically for surfacing our extrusions. The concepts will be extremely similar to more generic CNC machines.
If you have the “mechanicals”… our conversion kit should be able to install easily enough with some minor technical challenges like motor couplers or proximity switch placement problems to solve.
We’ve sold thousands of spindles to very happy but mostly quiet customers who use them for production in both professional and hobby/side-gig situations with great success.
We (me [owner] and my team) took that expertise and applied it to our conversion kit design and wiring. I’m extremely happy with the Masso controller in how simple, self-contained, and upgradable it is. We’ve sold several dozens of our conversion kit to happy customers many of whom are using it in their production environments.
I believe the abundance of Masso documentation, our extremely good relationship/partnership with them, and Pwn’s willingness to help customers “where they are” is what makes our products, like the conversion kit, most successful.
Any chance you can share a photo of the machine? That’ll give everyone here a better idea of the challenge you’re presenting.
Generally if it can handle NEMA23 mounting for the stepper motors then i think you’re pretty much good to forward with this conversion.
If you run into technical challenges, we are certainly here to help you out with them. We certainly don’t shy away from the technical issues that could arise… we hobby in this stuff and love to explore new challenges in this space.