On Sunday 28 August 2016 04:12:03 Lester Caine wrote: > On 28/08/16 07:35, Marcus Bowman wrote: > > One interesting, but not unexpected, result from the survey is what > > is happening to Mach3, and not happening to Mach4. I run Mach3 as > > well as LinuxCNC, but it has been stuck in a time warp for a long > > time now, and I suspect it will gradually flop to a soft landing as > > XP machines die. Mach 4 is not showing the same signs of mass > > adoption, perhaps because of the price. That tells us something > > about the market, too. > > I'm running the same version of Mach3 that I installed on W2k and it > does the job of running the mill perfectly for me ... and my > customers. I keep saying I need to retry running LinuxCNC, but > currently all the spare time is taken up with other jobs. Such as > keeping my main business clients working on W10 which has yet to > become stable enough to rely on. All those sites ran XP for years > without a single problem! > > I've 2 CNC lathes sitting in storage waiting for computers to go with > them. Actually 3 but the third still needs the electronics rebuilding. > The hold-up is that Mach3 lathe will do some jobs but I'm not as > confident it will be as productive as the mills are. ELS is a possible > half way house, but I think these machines deserve some hardware that > will use the encoders on their spindles, and for that I think the > coprocessor approach is the best way forward, but the LinuxCNC options > still need to become a little more mature? Anybody working on an > interface to PokeysCNC or better still an alternative which we can > develop the code for ourselves?
Precisely Lester. I have used some code generators, such as the output translator for the eagle pcb designer, and am dissappointed in the bulkiness of the code so generated. And in its lack of fine detail and the one of 8 directions for a machine move. For everyday use, I write my own code, often more than one file to complete a project, and I make very heavy use of LCNC's ability to run in a while loop. The job my toy lathe finished about midnight last night would be a good example, carving a tool post support from a block of cast iron for itself as I am replacing that willowy compound feed with a solid block of metal whose top and bottom surfaces were purposely carved about a thousandth hollow ground. Less than 40 LOC, it was edited and restarted where it left off several times, but will be re-installed today. That and tapered gibs have done wonders for the accuracy of a repowered, pushing 20 yo 7x12 lathe. The hollow grind? Puts the cutting forces on the outside edge of its footprint on the cross slide, enhancing its rigidity a lot, and on top furnishes about a 5x improvement in the ability of setting the QC holder at a fixed angle and having it stay there. The top of the compound is so thin that I pulled the threads out of the original one trying to keep the tool post from rotating under load. I will be doing a similar tool post support on the 11x36 Sheldon I just bought as the threads in the cross and compound nuts were both severely shot, and rather than try to remake new nuts, getting rid of the damaged ways compound (ways tapered by about 15 thou, no clue how that was done as it doesn't look like wear), and putting in ball screws made far more sense. But progress is slow for 2 reasons, first being my ancient back. Sitting down to write code sure beats standing there for hours slowly turning cranks. I can do in code, what would be impossible for me to do by hand. I may ask for help here because my math skills aren't calculus level, never were. I quit school in the middle of the 9th grade in 1948 to go fix tv's for a living so I officially have an 8th grade education. I'll be 82 in about 5 weeks, so fading wet ram is at work too. I'd go so far as to say that if you can't write gcode on your own, you are a slave to whatever you can buy a license for, often at prohibitive costs with per annum support figures that would scare an SS recipient into finding a different hobby. That is not supportable unless you can bill per machine hour to pay for it. I have enough projects of my own and have no intention of soliciting work for them. To me, learning to use the cad tools is a far steeper learning curve than reading the docs and writing my own code, often for one or 2 off parts. And it keeps me out of the bars. :) 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> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
