About 7 years ago, I worked in a place that has a HAAS CNC 3 axis mill. On the front of the unit there was a small 10" screen with a whole slew of buttons. The machinist used these to set his starting height, and starting position, along with change g-code, etc. I was thinking about how easy it would be to make one of these possible sell it to a small market (Say LL?).

But the question is, what would be a good target price and would anyone need it?

What features should be included?


The way I was seeing this was, you buy the main unit (I'd say $600-$1000) which has a 10" screen (possibly touch screen) and all the control buttons on the front, and built in software.

Then you buy plug-in boards for it (one for each axis) that will run your motors ($80-$150 ea). That way you buy any voltage plug-in module and just snap it into the chassis of the control unit, and wire your motors directly into the module. Eliminating the need for those serial stepper control units. These plug-in modules could also incorporate limit switch inputs, and encoder inputs.

The unit will take G-code and run the CNC for you, so you dont need to have your nice PC sitting right next to the CNC.

Now theres ALOT more ideas I have going for this (more-so on the software side of things) than I can explain right here (plus I dont want brain to jump to this before I do ).

Who here would buy this?

I believe that LL will be offering touch screen computers (much like a mini-Q) for use with the RoGR/micRo lines. As such, I would suggest to contact brainchild and discuss it with him. Until then this thread will be closed.

cheers,
gs