Lucas van Staden <lvs@???> wrote:
>Hope someone on the list may have some knowledge of this:
>My father in law's workshop has some CNC milling machines.
>They have com ports which can connect them to pc's. (DB25 female style
>com ports on the machines) From what I can gather the com ports are
>standard.
>His new cam software saves the cnc programs to a usb stick.
>So we are looking for com to usb converters.
Not enough. The serial ports are designed to accept serial data
comms. Usually a bit of a handshake protocol. Some used Xmodem for
checksums, etc. But it's not unusual to simply trust the transfer.
>Anyone used a specific model of serial to usb adaptor for this type
>of setup? (or any setup similar, that just worked?)
Nope. You'll have to roll your own. The CNC machine won't know what
to do with the USB device
>The adaptor must have a female usb port port, to allow the usb
>stick to be connected to the device. (the pc in use is to far away
>from the cnc machine to run a cable, especially along the workshop)
Gumstix could be an easy route for a hand-held, battery-powered
device to do what you want. Put them in a box with a couple of
push-buttons and status lights; maybe an LCD if you want to get
fancy. <
http://www.gumstix.com/>
It could pretend to be a USB stick, and then interface via its
RS-232 into the older CNC machines.
You could whip up a prototype based on a "waysmall 200"
<
http://gumstix.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=79>
It can operate as a USB client and has 2 serial ports.
It you want to be able to plug in a USB stick and transfer a file
from it to CNC machine via a serial port, then you need to be able
to *choose* which file. That would entail a display, more
push-bouttons and USB-Host capability, at least doubling the cost of
hardware.
--
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign | Science is the belief in
X against HTML mail | the ignorance of the experts.
/ \ and postings | -- Richard Feynman
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