CNC Wright 5x10 Table..... old out of date not working correctly

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@TomWS Of course anyone is welcome to jump in I just saw TomWS commenting on another post about Mach3 controller info. If you have a few minutes I would like to pick your brain. The guy who is teaching me to powder coat picked up a table and it has NO instructions. Also sounds like 4’ish years ago it was shut down/sold. The company does currently still offer kits but they come with Mach3 and windows 10.

My questions.

  1. Can a system running Mach 3 be upgraded to Mach4? I noticed Mach3 was last updated in 2012.

  2. any thoughts how I would handle post processing?

  3. Would it be easier to get a new control board and start from scratch as if this was a complete DIY build?

My friend has been able to cut many things but nothing consistently.

Thanks in advance for any resources/thoughts.

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There’s a Facebook group with lots of helpful info on getting the post processor and more.

The company, if I recall correctly, had scammed/ripped off tons of customers by not fulfilling sales.

Was a big deal in the CNC community and it’s why people will often ask if “xxx” company is worth buying from.

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I see no reason to upgrade if this is just a 3 axis system. Mach3 was good enough and, frankly, I’ve never bothered with Mach4.

The Crossfire configuration file is fine for CNC Plasma Cutter and SheetCam already has a post processor for it. He’ll find others that work with SheetCam, but any of them would be adding bells and whistles to a functioning system.

If I was building a DYI CNC system and already have a Mach3 license the Mach3 USB control board is actually pretty decent from a functional and cost perspective. I wouldn’t use it to run a laser, but Plasma Cutter, absolutely.

FYI, I’ve recently seen an announcement that a new software ‘group’ has joined up with ArtSoft (Mach3 mfr) to provide a ‘new and improved’ version that, presumably, runs the Mach3 USB board. Ho Hum, ok, let’s see what they’ve got…

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Thank you guys. I have been lucky and happy with my Crossfire Pro. So I have not needed to dive any deeper than the surface. I do not use facebook but I think the guy Im helping does.

The computer that came with the system does have sheetcam also. I tried to load one of my F360 test files to run on his machine and it would not load. I processed it thru sheetcam (The way it was explained to him by the previous owner) and it spit out a program that was about 10 lines long and obviously did nothing.

???How should I save the F360 files so that they will work when processed through sheetcam???

Thanks again for your quick response. That clears up somethings

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You just take your DXF from Fusion, and load that to Sheetcam. That’s it.

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okay thanks. I have never saved any of my files as dxfs. So at least that part is easy. Thanks for the quick reply. This guy is teaching me to powder coat so I want to help him getting this up and running on his end.

I appreciate everyones help.

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You just right-click your sketch to save as DXF.

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That was stupid easy. Thanks