On 19 Oct 2016, at 19:04, Chris Albertson wrote: > There is good reason to think that it one day could outperform LinucCNC. > But the project is not yet as mature as the Linux CNC project. The > Machinekit design is certainly more modern. > > The question is do you want to be on the cutting edge of development or do > you just want to make parts on your mill? This is a real question as some > people just like building tools and don't make their living with their > mill. > > There is no reason not to pursue BOTH. Most of your investment in time > and money is the stepper or servo motors, and their drivers and power > supply. The difference of a dumpster-salvaged PC or a $40 ARM board is > not much. Do both. Linux CNC has the advantage of maturity and I'd say > that today it is the safe choice but Machine Kit has potential. I'd say > do both and decide later
Another contender has to be the GRBL boards. I have tried one fitted to a friend's gantry router, and it seems to work well. That comes as a board about the same size as the BeagleBone, and is pre-loaded with the software. Communication is via an attached pc, over USB. The board itself seems to perform quite well; and GRBL has been around a long time. So maybe try all three, then choose. Mind you, there does seem to be a certain degree of duplication of effort, with these boards and software, and I recall seeing another promising contender recently (perhaps it was on Kickstarter?). A lot of this is driven by the 3D printer market, and that was one of the reasons Machinekit forked from LinuxCNC - to add features specific to 3D printers. Marcus > > Certainly in the future it will become very hard to find desktop PC systems > that are suitable without going to a landfill and digging one up. I'd say > this might happen in 10 years > > On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 10:39 AM, <dan...@austin.rr.com> wrote: > >> >> http://www.machinekit.io/ >> >> Anybody familiar with this? Got a friend who wants to put it on a >> BeagleBone Black. LinuxCNC run onboard a Cortex A8 directly and the HDMI >> monitor, keyboard, mouse etc plug straight into that, not just acting as a >> motion controller from a remote PC. >> >> Notable benefit would seem to be that the IO is very low-latency without a >> motion controller card, and the architecture is 100% consistent, as opposed >> the latency lottery that is picking a PC and its MB chipset and seeing how >> it works. >> >> BBB does have 2x 46 pin IO headers. I'm not sure if all pins can be >> assigned arbitrary HW functions, but it sounds like plenty anyhow. >> >> He asked me about it and all I can do so far is say "hmm". The Machinekit >> website is pretty sparse. >> >> Danny >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> ------------------ >> Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most >> engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot >> _______________________________________________ >> Emc-users mailing list >> Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users >> > > > > -- > > Chris Albertson > Redondo Beach, California > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most > engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
