On Sunday 19 October 2014 10:22:07 Bruce Layne did opine And Gene did reply: > I'm always trying to nudge my friends and YouTube garage machining > buddies to adopt LinuxCNC. It's good natured, but I am serious. I > notice reluctance on their part, but I try to reassure them by telling > them, at this point, I really don't see how Mach could be any easier to > install and configure. Other than sending a free technician to do it > for you, it's about as easy as it gets. But there still seems to be > some hesitation. They seem to regard me as the siren of Greek > mythology, trying to entice their ship onto the rocks. > > Last week, a friend's hard drive crashed on his mill and he spent most > of the week getting it running again, and most of that of course was > Windows and Mach. I told him that I routinely backup the small > LinuxCNC folder by dragging it to a USB thumb drive. That contains > all of my machine configuration files and all of my G code. If my > hard drive died, I'd plug in a new one, pop in the Ubuntu/LinuxCNC > thumb drive and reinstall everything in a few minutes, then drag the > old LinuxCNC folder to the new hard drive and Bob's your uncle. I'm > making chips. Tell me again how Linux is too geeky complicated and > Mach and Windows is so easy? > > There are plenty of people who genuinely like Mach and do a lot of free > advertising for them, including hardware manufacturers who say things > like, "No matter what you start with, you'll end up using Mach." But > for each of these Mach cheerleaders, there seem to be a person on the > serious side of hobby machining, typically people who started with CNC > as a hobby who are now doing KickStarter manufacturing, opening small > town machine shops, etc., and they started with Mach but seem unhappy > with it. They're the Mach captives. They use Mach, including the more > advanced features, but they make disparaging comments. I watch their > YouTube videos and they say, "Well, I went back out to the shop and > Mach had crashed again. Big surprise." But these captives seem to be > suffering from the CNC version of Stockholm Syndrome. They're > sympathizing with their captors. When I suggest how easy it'd be to > swap hard drives and install LinuxCNC and use the same hardware, (and > I've even volunteered to do it for them) and if they didn't like it > they could put the old hard drive back in and not miss a thing, they > mumble a bit and change the subject. Typically, their little CNC > machine shipped with Mach and they're afraid to wander off the > reservation. > > Here's a partial summary of the issue of Digital Machinist that Jack > mentioned: > > http://www.digitalmachinist.net/comingsoon/contents/view > > There's an article in there (that I haven't read) about using LED ring > lights for spindle mounted workpiece lighting. I bought a very nice > Aluminator 2.0 LED ring light on eBay on August 30th that's made to > magnetically attach to the spindle. It's very nice and well worth the > US$125 on my milling machine. My old eyes need all the light I can > get. > > www.ebay.com/itm/400759473641 > > On October 7th, I bought an 80mm Angel Eyes LED ring light on eBay for > US$11 that's marketed as accent lighting to surround an automotive > headlight. It requires half an amp at 12 volts and it will require a > bit of redneck engineering (I'm thinking 3M VHB double sided foam tape, > or I may machine a PVC housing) to attach to the 80mm water cooled > spindle motor on my CNC router. > > http://www.ebay.com/itm/281435821348 I went to his "store" but the smallest was a 60mm, still too big, need about 40mm maximum on my toy mill. But 2 of them for 18.95 USD seems like a heck of a deal. Available either in the exaggerated warm white, or in blue heavy white. In my case, a 20mm would be better than the leds in the endoscopy camera I have on the mill. That would get the light farther off axis and reduce the specular reflections that rather effectively blind it when searching for a target scratch. The leds in it are on about a 5mm circle surrounding the camera lens. That is effectively the same as holding the flashlight rear end on your nose when surveying your real estate for eyes looking back at you in the bush after dark.
If the reflection is red, only 2 candidates, a Siamese cat, or a human. Act accordingly if its human & doesn't belong there. [...] Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Comprehensive Server Monitoring with Site24x7. Monitor 10 servers for $9/Month. Get alerted through email, SMS, voice calls or mobile push notifications. Take corrective actions from your mobile device. http://p.sf.net/sfu/Zoho _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
