When I started to get swarf in my Keyboard I went to CompUSA and
picked up one of those flexible, waterproof keyboards. The keys are
sealed between sheets of molded rubber. You can pour a coke or a can
of cutting fluid on top of it and just rinse it of and keep going.
Not good for touch typing because of the spongy feeling to the keys
but I can only hunt and peck. I highly recommend it for anyone
needing a keyboard in a shop enviroment. I bought the short one
without the numeric keypad because I have mine on an old monitor
swing arm that I can push out of the way when I'm not using. Here is
a link for you can seek a picture but they are available at many
places on the net, computer shows and retail outlets. Way better
that screwing up a laptop.
5Fcode=290641&pfp=cat3
Bruce Buchner
I still use an old Toshiba Satellite 4080XCDT PII 366Mhz with 192Mb
ram on XP Pro for bench testing interfaces etc. It works fine at
25KHz
with network disabled. Network polling kills the pulse train. Also
look for a machine that does not share video memory with RAM.
I don't use it anymore in the shop, got sick of taking the keyboard
out and removing swarf particles ;)
I'm now using an old server I got for nothing. It's a 500Mhz twin
Pentium job, with only one processor (twin processors don't seem to
work any more with Mach2) 1Gb of memory and all SCSI drives, it's
fine
at 25 & 35KHz, but struggles at 45. It's also got a decent video
card
with 128Mb memory which helps a lot.
The swarf problem has been fixed by putting the keyboard on a
sliding
drawer under the bench and using a pendant when running.
--
Steve Blackmore
