On 5/1/24 13:11, Chris Albertson wrote:
The magoroty of people who do not want to make CNC tools their hoby and just
want to cut metal, wood or plastic, they would be best sewrved by one of the
“out of the box” solutions, like Acorn. No one, except Torch sells an LCNC
solution that come rewady to run with hardware and pre-istalled software. Most
users will want that.
Then if you are selling a turn-key setup, LCNC requires more expensive
hardware. 90% of the market is going to be runnng a very simple 3-axis CNC
router. Yoiu can buy PCBs that have a poerfull microcontroller and some
stepper moter drivers for $40 retail or have one made in china for 1/3rd that
price. You then but $50 worth of electronics in a $10 enclosure and sell it for
$300.
The end user will never in a million years complain that he can not edit the
config file to run industrial servos over Ethercat.
On the other hand many people do seem to make CNC a hobby even if they really
don’t need to make a ‘billion CNC’d parts. For them LCNC is prefect and a
machine that “just works” would be usless because they’d have nothing to do.
What I am having good luck with running all the fancy stuff for 3d printers on them
is the currently $65 bananapi-m5. All 4 usb ports are usb3 so speeds are not a
problem. I am just now bringing up an old Ender 5 Plus that died a couple years
ago, able to run at 30mm/second max because it comes with a puny Y motor, but now
has 2 more bigger higher voltage power supply's, the X&Y motors are now
stepper/servo's, I belted the z motors together and unplugged one so bed tilt is
locked, lots of heavy flying weight is now CF tubing, much lighter to throw around,
and its loafing at 200mm/sec speeds. What it formerly took 3 days to make is now
done in 17 hours. That bpi-m5 is talking to the $52 control card that runs the
printer with a single usb-C cable.
I have not tried linuxcnc on one of them but it runs fine on an rpi4b with 2
gigs of ram,
Gene, if that Pi4 is running Klipper, of course it is not loaded up. Kipper
pushes 100% of the real-time work onto the MCU. The Pi only has to read the
g-code file and do the motion planning and run the web server based GUI.
Screen rendering and mouse tracking and all the low-level GUI stuff is done on
the user’s web browser. LCNC is just the opposite, so you can’t compare.
Klipper does not care at all which OS you run. It runs very well in a virtual
machine or even on a Pi-zero. I’m using a Pi3, 1GB and see only 8% CPU usage
In fact you can run multiple copies of Klipper on one computer and drive
multiple printers at the same time.
running my 11x54 Sheldon lathe. Install the build-essential & the latest python
3, hook it to a breakout board fed by a usb-3 cable, and build lcnc from master's
src. It ought to just work. Might have to build a rt kernel, but my 3d printers
don't seem to mind the current jammy offering.
But let’s say you were a sign maker and wanted to cut out plastic letters with
a CO2 laser. You bill your customers at $125 per machine-hour. How many hours
do you want to spend learning to build real-time kernels, it costs you $125
for every one of those non-billable hours. And on top of that maybe marketing
and sales are not getting done while you work on a DIY CNC project.
Same with plumbing, It is not technically hard to repair pipes, snake drains,
or replace a water heater. But what if you own a restaurant? The owner is
more than happy to pay the $250/hr rate to have two plumbers and a well-stocked
truck show up and fix the problem because he has to close the business until
the problem is fixed.
So in an industrial setting DIY could very easily be much more expensive than
buying a turn-key system or even hiring the work done for you.
But on the other hand, many of us are not in a situation where “toime is money”
and LCNC is a good fit. But it is not a good fit at all for everyone.
Much of that is common sense Chris. But I'm not your average machinist,
I am a CET with an 8th grade education that spent the last 18 years of
his working life keeping the local CBS affiliate on the air. By myself
about 75% of that time. And I often do something that stretches the
imagination just to see if I can do it. I am not worried about the time
or $, its something to keep me out of the bars.
For instance, the acid test for this rebuilt Ender 5 Plus I've spent the
last year rebuilding and the last 4 days calibrating is now underway,
its making a pair of half nuts for a woodworking vise, in buttress
threads to fit a 20" long, 2" in diameter hard maple screw carved with
g-code I wrote every character of. And its doing it at 230mm/sec speeds,
using stepper/servo motors, that's 7.6 times faster than what that E5+
could do OOTB. Of course it weighs 30 lbs more than OEM now and I have
to handle it with a hoist. I'm still pushing the speed up but very
incrementally. And I have an even bigger trony-400 thats is about half
done to finish yet. But I am also running out of time, I'll be 90 in
October. The point is, I'm having fun. Isn't that what life is all about?
Take care and stay well.
Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis
_______________________________________________
Emc-users mailing list
Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
