2011/2/6 Kirk Wallace <kwall...@wallacecompany.com>: > > I believe no matter what technology you invest in now, it runs the risk > of going away tomorrow. Plus in the commercial world, even as expensive > as the hardware is, the most important thing is product quality, > reliability and mostly, support. If I were able to develop a commercial > CNC controller, I would use the current well proven technology in order > to present a reliable and capable product. Over time, the hardware will > change. If one of my controllers breaks, I would probably replace the > whole controller to minimize down time. The replacement would use the > new current technology. > > Right now, the proven current EMC2 technology is PCI/FPGA cards and > parallel ports. I would also look to industrial hardware similar to > this: > http://www.advantech.com/products/APAX-5000-Series/sub_1-CYHJKJ.aspx > > because that's what a customer would expect to see. I would not dwell on > using consumer motherboards, unless they happened to fit the > application. One can even still get systems with ISA slots: > http://www.advantech.com/products/IPC-6006/mod_4512E8DA-A383-4F75-AB57-B4817793F5ED.aspx > (Short URL) http://alturl.com/6r9uo > > If push comes to shove, in a commercial environment, it might be > reasonable to design and build the controller boards needed. One just > needs to be ready when the customer calls.
The original CNC controls of my waterjet machine was built on Advantech hardware. I have to say that even after 10 years of service it is fully operational, so I find it to have good quality. The problem with it is that only Advantech can provide support for their products and I have no options, if I do not like their attitude/pricing etc. I doubt that EMC will support it and I doubt that Advantech will care to write drivers just for me. My concept is that I am offering solution, where my customer can take over the support any time by their own employees or by someone else. I am not trying to lock them in my services. So that is why I would like to use as generic hardware as possible. And putting D510MO board in a industrial case makes it look like industrial PC. It is all about perception, because I believe that Advantec still uses Intel or AMD CPUs or other parts that one can find in consumer products as well. It works with EMC, because the concept there is to have smart CNC application on dumb hardware. I don't know any other example of this approach. Everybody else tries to create smart servo drives (like my ServoStar 601 - I can define even homing routines and motion tasks in servo controller!) and put simple CNC control on top of it. That is why they need sophisticated hardware. > For a commercial product, the thing that seems to be missing with EMC2, > is a polished user interface. Tormach and Smithy may have addressed this > on their products. Yupp, that is exactly what I think! The good news is that Axis look _a lot_ better than Mach3 bling bling s**t, and there is a chance for _any_ user to tweak and customize it. I have been looking at commercial CNCs and their GUIs and main thing that I would like to be changed in EMC's GUI - remove access to joint mode. I cannot control, if customer will have experienced operator of the machine or no, so for machines with non-trivial kinematics (which is where I see the strength of EMC) it is very dangerous. I have seen that for my self on my gantry-style waterjet. My main selling point for EMC is that it is open-source and thus any user can change and adjust it over time, as they learn their machine and find some better ways of doing some things. Want some function/action to be done with one press of a button? It takes few minutes to add pyvcp button. With GladeVCP it might look even better. And, as I have found out, it is pretty easy to deploy customized GUI on a fresh install of EMC. And being able to adjust GUI for each particular machine or customer is a "killer". I tried to get some support for original CNC controls on my waterjet. I got ZERO response - manufacturer told me that author is another company, I should ask them, asked authors, they did not respond at all - it turned out that both these companies simply do not cooperate any more, and I was locked in situation, when nobody cares. So that is where is another strength for EMC being outsourced - customer is not locked with specific service provider. I know, that nobody wants to admit such things, but I can easily tell my clients - they are not left all alone with their EMC-related problems in case something happens to my company, basically any skilled programmer can step in and solve things. It would take some time for an outsider to learn the way EMC is built, but at least there is a chance. I did not (and still do not have) that with MEFI controls on my waterjet machine. > BTW, MESA has PC104 boards and cabled PCIe. I have been looking at them, but I better avoid things that I do not really understand - I suspect that I might need to provide some after-sales support and I do not want a situation, where customer might be smarter than me. Viesturs ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The modern datacenter depends on network connectivity to access resources and provide services. The best practices for maximizing a physical server's connectivity to a physical network are well understood - see how these rules translate into the virtual world? http://p.sf.net/sfu/oracle-sfdevnlfb _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
