On Monday 18 February 2019 20:00:21 Greg Bentzinger via Emc-users wrote:
> ( Greg )
> Every kid would love to ask for a pony, if they thought they could get
> it they would ask for a unicorn. Reality however usually proves this
> to be impractical to impossible. Everything is changing today at a
> hyper accelerated pace. Back in the day Motorola produced the 68000
> CPU, it was used in all sorts of equipment from Apple PC's to Okuma
> machine controls. I would guess that that CPU was still being used to
> manufacture products 20 years after debut. Today PC cpu and chip sets
> are what a 3-5 year life cycle before going OOP. Same with many ARM
> CPU. Look at the Arduino and how many generations have come down the
> road. Most new version have moved to 3.3V and are no longer compatible
> with 5V shields. Even if someone did come up with a backplane card
> rack for most of the interface cards, that main CPU board would have
> to be updated nearly constantly because key components would become
> un-obtainable. Todays global manufacturing tries to run as close to
> true JIT as it can.(JIT="Just in Time") companies want as little space
> and capitol tied up in inventory. When I worked an Apple PC assembly
> line they were so JIT focused they only kept 4-6 HOURS worth of
> components in the facility. This meant that trucks were delivering
> Mem, HDD's ect. were being unloaded every few hours and being reloaded
> with boxed product ready for market. Several Chinese machine tool
> builders have offered LinuxCNC as the control to reduce the overhead
> of building the machine. I believe it would be used more if tool
> builders were sure they could not be held liable for a system they
> sold that had been modified by the buyer. GRBL has come along way -
> and it was a project to fit a stripped version of the early
> EMC/LinuxCNC into cheap Arduino hardware. the current v1.1 IIRC had to
> strip down the boot loader and some other items to still be able to
> squeeze the optimized assembly code into the Atmega328p chip. What did
> GRBL have to give up to fit in an Arduino? Tool table capability
> {G43}, Tool radius comp {G41-G42}, Minimal look ahead buffer, No
> program storage - its all drip feed via serial, no program editing,
> X-Y-Z only no additional axis, no spindle feedback (tapping), requires
> second device to stream G-code and operate the control. Now I like
> GRBL and it has the honor of being the founding code which virtually
> all extruder type 3D printers is based. I hope someday there is a port
> for a rotary axis, I would love to use it to engrave on cylinders
> using X-A-Z. For now though, the movement towards SSerial and
> interface from control PC via Ethernet allows all sorts of
> flexibility. As for HP-GL, I had to work with HPGL for tool paths for
> several years and it was a complete disaster. Mathematically a "line"
> has no physical width, not exactly so in HPGL so you will have gaps,
> broken chains, lines intersecting not at there endpoints and all arcs
> are output as splines. While at the scale for a HP pen plotter this
> worked out, for CNC use it was a dismal failure of epic man hours
> wasted trying to get each file into a usable state. I hope HPGL is
> banished from the face of the earth long before G-code begins to fade.
> I agree that G-code is far from perfect, but there is no other method
> out there that even comes close. Early AutoCAD had the same sort of
> dysfunction issues by the use of the "polyline" construct. Lastly -
> May I ask the status of LCNC v2.8? Is there any potential release date
> on the horizon? Thanks ( /Greg )
>
Don't know Greg. I'm running master on all my stuff, and except for a
rare minor upset tummy because I didn't get the memo, its just worked.
Breakage has been minimal, and fixed with the next build.
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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>
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