Hello all,

New to this forum but I have been reading a lot of your posts, picking up the wisdom of your instruction here and there.

We are in the process of overhauling some of our CNC machines.  We have 4 Maxnc 10 CL CNCs.  One of them we overhalled the controller with a new Gecko G540 and it works great.  We are using the newest version of Mach3 and really like a lot of the features.  We also have an ACT CNC and that came preloaded with an OEM version of Mach3.  Not as great as the newest software but still really good.

We decided to try an experiment in an effort to run all of our systems with Mach3 software.  We are trying to run one of our machines with the original Maxnc Cl controller box using Mach3.  I did a lot of research.  Discovered that the Maxnc people themselves are really no help and do not want you running their machines with Mach3.  I managed to get the pinout assignments and also read that if you select the the Max CL box under "ports and pins" you shouldn't have to manually change anything.  However, this did not entirely work.  Some of the axes had movement while others were limited (our machines are all 4 axis), especially the A axis.

Also, we can't seem to find a way to make the flood commands M8 and M9 work.  We tried a bunch of different configurations (including M8 on pin 14) and have no success getting it operational.

Is there a way to make Mach3 compatible with the Maxnc CL machinery?  What are we doing wrong?  Do I need to be hit in the head with a frying pan or do I need to take a hammer to the controller box?

I have been on the M8 M9 issue for 2 days now and have found absolutely nothing to help me.   

Appreciate any comments or help.

Jeff

As far as I am aware the pin outs are pre-set when you select one of the Max mode and there is nothing you can do to alter that. It sounds like you may have more modern machines than the ones that Mach supports as I am sure they are just 3 axis.
The docs for pin out  are on the ftp site but I presume you have already seen them, so if your machines are different then I think you will either have to replace components and use Mach as normal or continue to run with the setup you have.
Hood

Actually, the machines are 8 to 10 years old.  We just added a rotary table to give it a 4th axis.

I have a feeling that the Maxnc CL controller box may not be compatible with the Mach3 program but no one has disproven that yet.  I did get the pinout from the FTP site but the machine is not entirely responding.  Just ticking the "Max CL" box did not give the machine total operation.

Back to the drawing board.

Ok I know for sure that running in Max mode will not let you use a 4th axis. Reason being is pins are pre configured by Mach when in one of these modes and it just seems that the three axis are supported, or at least thats what the doc says.

I have seen in the past people saying they have hooked up a MaxNC and it worked, think it was likely on the Yahoo group though, so maybe post there and ask.
Hood