There are a few other factors. Yes, Mach is fairly common. Used in a lot of shops.
It has a few nice features. You can reconfigure and play with settings from within the app, for instance. You don't have to exit, then return. You can easily swap between GUI skins from within the app. (Seems like stepconf blows away GUI information if you re-run it against an existing configuration. Seriously, why? That should be a constant chosen by the user). With an app like Machscreen, it is trivial to re-skin Mach for your environment. The ability to reconfigure even extends to machine characteristics like motor tuning. It remembers what you have set. Plug-ins are fairly straight forward. To date, I have found only one fairly weird boundary case that required editing a file of any kind within Mach. I like Linuxcnc, but I can certainly see the appeal for Mach. I recently made a set of machines for some people who were not really machinists. They were elderly retirees. They were not interested in learning to become machinists. They wanted a basic screen that "looked like a DVD player". Essentially, E-stop, load file, home all and zero, run, stop, pause, resume, rewind were the only buttons on the touchscreen. They had an additional button which took them to a page with jogging and override limits options. That's it. Took about 20 minutes to re-skin in Mach. If they have any diagnostics to do, they attach a larger screen and bring up the 1024.set screen. Had showed them the various options of Linuxcnc and they hated them all. All the operator wanted to do was load a few pieces of wood into the fixture, then hit go. Nothing fancy. The closest existing screen within Linuxcnc was gaxis in gscreen and it was flaky in operation. (Seriously.. so close, but would go into a weird contention if you homed manually, then later hit the All-Home Machine button) The paradigm is shifting also when you get to 3D printers. They want appliance and appliance like behavior. Zero interest in becoming machinists. On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 3:44 PM, dave <dengv...@charter.net> wrote: > On Tue, 2013-10-08 at 16:09 -0500, Charles Steinkuehler wrote: > > On 10/8/2013 12:35 PM, Bruce Layne wrote: > > > For all of these little stepper based routers and other small systems > > > (most of the installations), what could be easier than installing > > > Linux (with lots of other goodies) and LinuxCNC from an ISO burned to > > > a flash thumb drive, then running StepConf? I can't imagine Mach > > > could possibly be any easier unless someone did it for you. > > > > That's why I'm trying _really_ hard to get LinuxCNC working well on the > > BeagleBone. The maker crowd with desktop CNC mills and 3D printers is > > far less scared of Linux than the "average man". There are still a lot > > of folks in this crowd who are "windows only", but even they are using > > micro-controller development environments (even if it's for an Arduino) > > to customize, build, and download firmware. > > > > If these folk start running on LinuxCNC in a big way, you'll see *VERY* > > rapid development. This is beginning to happen (ask Michael H. about > > his server logs for the MachineKit downloads...it's good he doesn't have > > to pay per byte!), but there's a lot more to do. > > > > IMHO, two the big areas that need help are documentation and new user > > experience. LinuxCNC rocks if you've been working in a machine shop and > > understand the concepts. Even the documentation is pretty good if you > > already know a bit about machining. But it's pretty complex and > > intimidating if you don't really know (for example) the difference > > between machine, joint, part, and world coordinates. :) > > > > ...and a pretty GUI (that doesn't eat CPU/GPU cycles) would be nice too! > > > Just being ignorant....what is the balance between client side and > server side for GUI's? > > TIA > > Dave > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > October Webinars: Code for Performance > Free Intel webinars can help you accelerate application performance. > Explore tips for MPI, OpenMP, advanced profiling, and more. Get the most > from > the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register > > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60134071&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ October Webinars: Code for Performance Free Intel webinars can help you accelerate application performance. Explore tips for MPI, OpenMP, advanced profiling, and more. Get the most from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60134071&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
