So I finally found a mill in my (low) price range and should be picking it up this weekend. The seller claims its in excellent shape, is under power and will demo of for me before we load it on the trailer. It is a Shizuoka AN-S with a GN-6 control. The pics that he sent out the machine look excellent, and his shop is spotless so I'm hoping this goes well, and that the thing fits in my garage without cutting a hole in the ceiling.
I'm totally new to actually operating a machine like this so any help would be great. Where would I find parts when needed, anything in particular to look out for on this machine, etc.. Even though this this thing is gonna cost less than a quarter of a cnc'd PM45, should I fork out the extra 5k for one of those just because its new? Although the PM45 is likely a much better fit for the real estate available in my two car garage.
Ultimately the machine is just gonna be used for hobby work and maybe some gunsmithing, but I do want to be able to cut steels and perhaps play around d with some titanium once I get the hang of things.
He said that he does feed it programs from his laptop into the rs232 port on the control, but the control only has 10k? of memory. I'm hoping there is a cost effective way to run larger programs on it. Can I drip feed this control? Will mach3 be able to talk to it? I didn't get into the details too much with him over the phone about that side of how he's doing it.
He did say the only problem he's encountered with the machine is that the X axis will briefly pause sometimes and then continue on. Is this something that could just be a loose connection, or something much more serious to look out for?
Otherwise he states that it is totally smooth with no abnormal noises or issues, and is ready to run code right away.
I'm totally new to actually operating a machine like this so any help would be great. Where would I find parts when needed, anything in particular to look out for on this machine, etc.. Even though this this thing is gonna cost less than a quarter of a cnc'd PM45, should I fork out the extra 5k for one of those just because its new? Although the PM45 is likely a much better fit for the real estate available in my two car garage.
Ultimately the machine is just gonna be used for hobby work and maybe some gunsmithing, but I do want to be able to cut steels and perhaps play around d with some titanium once I get the hang of things.
He said that he does feed it programs from his laptop into the rs232 port on the control, but the control only has 10k? of memory. I'm hoping there is a cost effective way to run larger programs on it. Can I drip feed this control? Will mach3 be able to talk to it? I didn't get into the details too much with him over the phone about that side of how he's doing it.
He did say the only problem he's encountered with the machine is that the X axis will briefly pause sometimes and then continue on. Is this something that could just be a loose connection, or something much more serious to look out for?
Otherwise he states that it is totally smooth with no abnormal noises or issues, and is ready to run code right away.