Any experience with a New Hermes Vanguard 3400?
I'm selling off a good bit of my shop for the coming move we're making to Tennessee. A gentleman on another forum picked up an old Vanguard 3400 engraver for a project, but in talking to him, a proper pantograph would be far better for what he was trying to do. So, I worked out a trade for the Vanguard and a little cash for my Deckel GK12 pantograph. It makes me a bit sad, as I had great plans for the thing, and I lost some money on it in the deal, but I wanted to give the guy a good price to help him out in his venture. Besides, much as I would like to keep everything, I have, oh, 10 tons of shop still, after closing my 3000 sq ft shop, to sell or move, and all that's moving is whatever I can tow in two loads on a flat bed with my '99 Suburban.
Anyway, I'm supposed to be getting this thing next week. I really don't have a plan for it yet, just want to get it going. It comes with the EP box, but apparently it doesn't power up fully. I was thinking about playing with getting the stepper driver daughter board going, and bypassing the antiquated EP main board for a smoothstepper, or just scrap the whole EP box for a G540 and CNC the thing. My wife has ideas of using it to engrave jewelry, and I'd love to figure out how to modify it to engrave rounds instead of just flats, but I haven't seen it in person yet so I don't know if this is possible.
Anyone ever use one of these guys? Are they any good?
Thanks,
Michael
3400 EP module going haywire
Kev Williams,
I have a question for you. I too have several "flat machines" of which one is a 3400.
Here is my issue on the 3400:
The PC that was running the old DOS program died, so I was running that machine with my Solustan RIP. Just unplugged the EP module during the time it took me to get a newer PC with the Open systems DOS program. Knowing that the EP module has to be turned on before you open the DOS program, I turned it on. It did the usual Z down and up and then for some unknown reason instead of the head moving to the 0 position (back left), the head moved all the way forward and to the right and kept trying to go farther. I tried pushing every button on that thing with no results. The only way to stop it was to turn it off. Re-hooked up the Solustan RIP to get the head moved back and tried again with the EP mod with same results :(
The entire time it was unplugged, about 3 months I did not mess with it or make any changes. Prior to this I was switching back and forth from the EP mod and the Solustan RIP without any issues.
So, I'm stumped as to what to do to resolve this. Any ideas you have would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!