On 1/20/2014 5:06 PM, Dave Covert wrote: > While my beast has routing as its first planned jobs, I also plan to print > 6' wings and fuselages for R/C aircraft, so I definitely need to keep the > extruder heaters and sensors front and center. > > What packages am I likely to need for routing on the BBB? for printing? > Can LinuxCNC do routing and printing? > > Both boards mention something about some software/firmware that comes > on/with them... what is that about?
For both routing and printing, you need some form of motion control software. Both tasks are very similar (coordinated moves in multi-axis space), but each has it's own unique requirements as well (spindle speed and coolant for routing/machining, extruder and heater control for 3D printing). AFAIK, there are currently three solutions for natively controlling a CNC machine on the BeagleBone: * The software written by Elias to run the Replicape * The software written by Bas to run the BeBoPr * LinuxCNC, which is a generic machine control platform traditionally used on x86 machines * Let me know if I missed any! All three available solutions use the on-board PRUs (dual 200 MHz 32-bit deterministic micro-controllers a.k.a. Programmable Realtime Unit) to generate step/dir signals with precision timing that is unaffected by the generally lousy interrupt latency performance of the ARM core. LinuxCNC uses a real-time Xenomai kernel and provides a programmable HAL (hardware abstraction layer) you can use to wire up various operating blocks to control your machine (things like PID controller loops, filters, gain and multiplexing stages, etc). I believe the software from both Bas and Elias run on a regular kernel, and rely on the PRU to do more than LinuxCNC (ie: things like motion planning and velocity/acceleration profiling), but I'm not 100% sure as I am not real familiar with either code base. One thing I like about LinuxCNC, is the ARM core to do the motion planning via Xenomai real-time threads, meaning the GHz CPU and FPU can be used for tasks like non-trivial kinematics. I first started looking into LinuxCNC because I wanted to control a linear delta printer like the Kossel, and I am actively working on adding kinematics for other non-Cartesian machines like the Wally and GUS Simpson. Brandon Heller is farther along than I am on the linear delta front, and has a nice video on G+ of printing using LinuxCNC on the BeagleBone: https://plus.google.com/104919785646757688261/posts/i7XvKHi2c39 -- Charles Steinkuehler char...@steinkuehler.net -- For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BeagleBoard" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beagleboard+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
