So I've got an older Epilog Legend 32. Great laser. But it has a few problems. Enough that I don't really want to put more money into a machine with such proprietary hardware in it that is no longer made. I'd hate to get the tube refurbished only for the motherboard to die. And I think my Y axis motor/encoder might have some issues too. That's going to be an expensive fix by itself.

So... rather than just buying a chinese glass tube laser... what if there were an aftermarket controller/drivers I could get to run my existing tube and servos on?

Looking at buying a chinese DC glass tube machine is what got me thinking about this. Ruida and a couple of others make "machine aggregator" parts for making DC excited glass tube lasers pretty darn straightforward. Does something like that exist for making servo run RF metal tube machines?

Seems like such a waste to put such a great machine out to pasture because the motherboard is (or may soon be) bad. For being 20 years old and having some anachronisms to it for that era, my Epilog laser is faster than any DC-excited glass tube machine could ever hope to be. I would absolutely pay to have the old Synrad tube in it refurbished if I knew there was an upgrade path to keep it running even if the motherboard went up in smoke.

There's so many older epilog, universal, trotec, etc machines out there with good tubes, it seems like this is something that would have a decent market to support it.