converting burny 2.8 to emc2 in Atlanta

bluorg wrote:

I have a burny 2.8 on a plasma. I am looking for someone who has done this conversion that can help with this in Atlanta.

The chances of finding a user of a particular software package who has converted a specific item of hardware in a particular city seem, on first sight, to be fairly small.

Are you looking for advice on a conversion, or do you want to pay someone to do the conversion for you?

Assuming the former, the question is probably whether the system has a clean "break point" between the existing CNC controller and the motor power electronics.

bluorg wrote:

I am looking to pay someone to help with the conversion. The mechanical side and the connection to the servo controllers I completely understand. I understand almost nothing about the software/digital side.

Luckily the software/digital side is the bit that this forum can help with.

I suppose the first question is "What's in the box"?

bluorg wrote:

Pretty simple really. A digital board driving a analog board. It uses two DACs to a opamp to create + or - 10v to drive the drive motors. It utilizes a tach signal generated from the motors to control speed and uses a encoder on each drive w/2500 counts per revolution.

In that case, it is probably quite a simple setup.

There are a number of possible setups, but one that would work would be a PC + Mesa 5i23 + Mesa 7i33TA, or alternatively, and cheaper PC with parallel port + Mesa 7i43 + Mesa 7i33TA
This is not a recommendation, just a setup I am familiar with from www.mesanet.com. You might also want to look at products from Motenc and Pico:
wiki.linuxcnc.org/emcinfo.pl?EMC2_Supported_Hardware

You can try booting a PC from the LinuxCNC boot CD (if you don't install then no permanent change are made to the PC) and try running pncconf and configuring a dummy setup with one of the above Mesa configs. You would leave the tachs connected to the drives, and connect the encoders to the 7i33TA.EMC2 will then read the encoder positions and output velocity commands as PWM, converted to voltage by the 7i33, then connected to the +/-10V terminals on the drives. You would basically be replacing the entire digital board.

Some servo tuning will be needed, but as the whole PID loop is in software and is visible in the built-in oscilloscope then this is easier than normal.

Do you have a torch height control?