Might be worth looking at the way we use vCarve for the Multicam. Dust is a huge problem (for both of us), so we use a thinclient - no moving parts, no fan, nada. Seems like this would be ideal for Metal shop as well, since the dust in there can be pretty difficult for electronic devices.
The software runs on the jump server, which adds yet more options to the mix (you can work on designs from home with ease, tweak cutpaths, etc).
Thinclients are cheep too.
Yep, that sounds like a great idea. One potential snag: it must have a parallel port, since the PlasmaCAM control box uses that to interface to the PC.
There is a possibility of using something like this USB-to-Parallel cable, but, if the software depends on strict timing, it may not work. Never hurts to try.
(edit: Do you have a pointer to the one you use on the vCarve?)
The Multicam actually reads files directly from a CIFs share, so easy to communicate with the machine. The parallel port complicates, but I think a usb->parallel or IP->Parallel might be workable and cheap.
I’m willing to help set this up on the Jump Server, thin clients, whatever, if that’s the way y’all want to go.
I received last week the documentation from PlasmaCam, even on their new equipment requires a parallel port. They state that the USB to Parallel will not work.
Bad news and good news.
Bad: You’re not going to get more than (<)4GB RAM in that machine, most likely. Whoever set that machine up installed Windows 10 in the 32-bit version (yes, you can still do that). 32-bit Windows OSs can only address 4GB RAM – that’s a hard addressing maximum, meaning you also eat up half a gig to a gig on reserved memory addressing overhead, which is why you will only see 3.xxx GB of RAM available on machines with 32-bit OSs no matter how many sticks you stuff in there.
I’m assuming it’s on a 32-bit OS because the PlasmaCAM software is old enough to be one of those 32-bit programs that didn’t behave well in the 32-bit emulation layer that 64-bit Windows has. It’s possible that it would actually run under 64-bit Windows if somebody wanted to monkey around with it enough, but if there is any manufacturer support left on this stuff then running on an unsupported OS would likely invalidate it.
The good news: I have a number of clients that run time-sensitive, high-precision specialty hardware that still runs on serial and parallel ports (including one not 5 miles from the 'Space that basically runs a few massive German-manufactured Geiger counters out of their warehouse as part of their business), and I’ve found that, in every case, folks that say they can’t run on USB adapters are absolutely wrong. RS-232 and IEEE 1284 both ran on WAY slower buses in the PC-XT and up days than even the slowest USB connection, by multiple powers of 10.* And since Windows abstracts ports from hardware, there is literally no way a device could be able to tell it’s running on a USB adapter – unsurprising, really, because to the device there should be no difference on what bus the serial port sits on, be it USB, modern PCIe, older PCI or the original ISA bus of the AT-series machines. Not caring what bus it’s on is by design. Modern port hardware has better timing circuitry than nearly anything you could get your hands on 15 years ago when XP was the hot thing to be running. So if we really want to move to a USB serial or parallel connection for any particular device we’ve got in the 'Space, I can probably help facilitate that.
(Of course, if you really want the port inside as opposed to outside of the machine – so much prettier! o.O – there are still add-on internal cards one can buy to add such ports. Six of one, a half-dozen of the other.)
Good catch.
I am still running into this, too, but apparently not enough, because I didn’t EVEN think to look at that.
I think I may have one of those add on parallel port cards. Is it a PCI bus or something else?
I didn’t know that, looks like I learned something today. I did look at the spec of the motherboard which said 8gb.
I don’t know; I didn’t crack open the machine. But I’d imagine so.
I can dig up a USB <-> Parallel (ECP/EPP) adapter and we can try it out. Can’t hurt, right?
It’s probably PCIe.[quote=“zmetzing, post:30, topic:15176”]
Can’t hurt, right?
[/quote]
If the USB aproach worked then that really opens up options.
There are varying qualities of parallel and serial chipsets, of course; one can Internets themselves some research on that – I’ve found that industrial and test equipment boards tend to have the best discussions on that topic (because they tend to run into the exact same problem as us far more often, and also tend to have very exacting standards for what “good” is in this context).
One other thing I’d note, that I missed from earlier:
Fanless PCs are, as a general rule, designed to not be entirely sealed – for the same reason that they may be quite the opposite of what we’d want in that space. Such PCs are generally designed for living room media center “appliance” use, because such areas will generally have passable airflow and be kept at around room temperature. They didn’t magically find a way around the rule that “heat kills electronics,” sadly. (I wish!)
So a “sealed PC” would tend to have to be pretty over-spec’ed to deal with the levels of heat that would build up within it, and even an “unsealed” fanless PC would not do well in an environment that can get on the hot side. I don’t know for sure, but I get the impression that the Metal Shop may be such an environment – in which case, yes, a fan is yet another potential point of failure and one that would be even more prone to that from little bits of metal floating around, but it may be an inevitable necessity.
Instead of a more “sealed” PC, I’d suggest that the way to mitigate fan issues is to look for a PC that integrates filters in front of its fan bays (or, alternatively, retrofit spacing for filters onto the existing fan bays of whatever we buy #TheMakerWay), and make sure they’re checked and cleaned/replaced on a regular cycle.
I think you might be grossly underestimating the amount of particulate matter in the Metal Shop air. I’m guessing that those filters would plug up and create a sealed case in short order.
A custom-milled case, with the case in contact with the processor heatsink, should work, right? Seems like we could do something like that on the HAAS. I’d even go so far as to mill radiator fins inside the case and put a little fan in there to circulate the captive volume of air past them, which will then be radiated by the outside of the case.
I’d be happy to install Win 10 x64 on the machine, but you might want to check to see that 64 bit drivers are available for everything. Usually when I see a 32 bit OS install these days it is because either a driver issue or a processor issue (non-x64 processor).
Only $130 for a 7" x 7" x 4.5" 6061-T6 bar from online metals. 
This sounds like an awesome project!
PSST!
You’re talking to yourself.
Love the idea, though.
What he said. Sounds like fun! I just wouldn’t necessarily count on that being the new machine.
Maybe the room doesn’t get that hot… I dunno. But if it does (and likely even if it didn’t), I assure you, I’d rather just up the frequency of cleaning/replacing the fan filters than have to deal with a sealed system. There’s a reason those aren’t done.
A friendly word of advice for your project, though: you want to custom-mill the heatsink more than you do the case. Think laptops: they have heat pipes running across them and directed toward areas of the system where the heat can be released. I’m still not really sure what you want is possible (after all, those systems tend to use venting if not fans as well), but if it is, it’d probably be through custom heat sinking.
Might work, but I certainly wouldn’t be first in line to advocate for that. The software is old, and there is certainly 32-bit software (and 32-bit drivers) out there that don’t play nice on 64-bit machines… that machine is a C2D, and was certainly 64-bit capable all along; when I saw that, the voice in the back of my head (you know, the one that hits the “hey, guys, watch this!” voice with a mallet when he starts getting too loud) said, “hm, I wonder if there was a reason they specifically chose to install the 32-bit version of the OS…”
Maybe find a scavenged spare machine somewhere to test a 64-bit PlasmaCAM installation on first?
There is also an outside chance the PlasmaCAM software may be 16-bit.
