On 07/25/2014 02:56 AM, Steve Blackmore wrote: > Lathe's a different story, Bert's stuff wont take an encoder input, so > lathes no better than Mach. LinuxCNC has it own problems.
I'm unaware of the problems with LinuxCNC and lathes. I have a tiny precision CNC mini-lathe that I built. I kinda cheated. I bought a Sherline 4000 mini lathe, built the storage base for it, wired the electronics panel (the bulk of the time spent) and installed LinuxCNC on it. The LinuxCNC installation took about 30 minutes, and I'm no LinuxCNC guru. Sure, for the weird and complicated stuff, LinuxCNC is plenty capable with some configuring and a bit of mucking around under the hood. That's fun to a lot of people. There's also a LOT of very helpful assistance available on this forum if that's your path to CNC nirvana. But if you just need a simple generic setup, I really don't think anything could be easier than LinuxCNC, including high dollar commercial products. I simply selected the Sherline option from the list of common lathe configurations that are available. I built the entire CNC Mini-Lathe in 15 hours, and it's been rock solid and far more capable than I expected. I sometimes use it for bigger stuff that I didn't think it'd be able to do until I started using it. I don't have a spindle encoder because I don't anticipate threading or tapping on this machine, but I'll have a spindle encoder when I finally make time to convert my larger lathe where I plan on doing a lot of threading operations. > I'm looking at a Fanuc, Siemens or Chinese controller for that. I need > to make some money again, not fart about learning how to program > software or do development work I forgot to mention that I use my Mini Lathe for paying work for my small business. The return on investment has been extremely good. I feel that it's paid for itself already, using it for incidental jobs over the last year, and now I'm almost ready to crank it up for an ongoing short run production for a new product. I consider the 15 hours that it took to build it, and the ~$1500 to buy all of the parts new (including a lot of tooling) to be very good investments for my small business. It didn't hurt that the LinuxCNC portion of the build took 30 minutes and cost $0.00. Oh, if only everything in my life was as cheap and easy. :-) Huge thanks to everyone who worked and played in the LinuxCNC sandbox to provide such unexpected value for me. As an engineer, I know There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, but from my perspective, LinuxCNC seems to defy the TANSTAAFL Rule. I've also found my few LinuxCNC experiences to be very enjoyable. I'm looking forward to doing more LinuxCNC projects. I enjoy building the machines, and I enjoy using the machines that I built to do the work I need to do. It's all very enriching. It's rewarding both financially and personally. Again, huge thanks to those who have made this happen. > Anyway - I'll leave you Linux guys to prevaricate and dither and get on > with actually making things. LOL. Funniest thing I've read this week. Stay classy, Steve. PS - This email thread reminded me of a couple of Axioms For Living: The common thread in all of your problems is you. When trying to accomplish anything, attitude counts for more than intellect, knowledge or innate skill. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Want fast and easy access to all the code in your enterprise? Index and search up to 200,000 lines of code with a free copy of Black Duck Code Sight - the same software that powers the world's largest code search on Ohloh, the Black Duck Open Hub! Try it now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bds _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
