I'm a hobbyist and I like the fact that Linuxcnc is an all in "one package".
I don't want to be messing with different modules, Machinekit is going down that route, maybe it be better for you to have a discussion with the developers there. Tormach seem to like the LCNC architecture, so much so that they actually put something back into the project. I'm interested in a couple of things: 1: Are you a active user of Linuxcnc ? 2: Why venture capital funding ? 3: What are you hoping to gain and how much project control are you expecting to have ? 4: Why not raise your own capital, fork Linuxcnc and go in the direction you seem fit ? This whole thread rings similar to the guy who was wanting grbl support added on the forum. On 27/1/20 3:50 pm, Rafael Skodlar wrote:
Never expected that saddle on a cow comment would trigger so many patties ;-) LinuxCNC is not only about RT kernel as some threads seem to spin around to no end. It seems that Chris understood my original post the best. What he pointed out is use of modern technologies that makes it possible to create advanced systems we could only dream about years ago. Those of you that have a problem with that please do some research on industry trends. Then stick heads together and see how much of that could be built for DIY crowd that fall in the following categories: - hobby, - light industrial use, - advanced industrial use GNU Linux and other open source software made it through those stages in early years. In my opinion CNC systems need to be looked at as robotic devices instead of exotic things that cannot be improved beyond what LinuxCNC and alike (?) are doing at this time. This page describes pretty much what Chris was saying I believe: https://www.mmsonline.com/articles/modern-cnc-control-systems-for-high-speed-machining "The CNC consists of the following main components: Operator panel based on industry-compatible PC technology for the man/machine interface (MMI) CNC control unit (NCU) Programmable controller (PLC) Drive modules for machine tool axes and spindles (feed drives VSA, and main spindle drive HSA) Motors (AC motors and linear drives) Supply and energy recovery unit (S/E unit) As each drive module, the NCU, the PLC and the operator's panel each contain a processor, a modern CNC can also be seen as a multiprocessor system." That makes it clear that it's CRAZY to use PC motherboard for running all functions of a CNC system. I see some on this list keep mentioning PPort; please get off the dead horse or jump the ship! If I could, I would tell this to Ken Olson, DEC CEO, in the early 90's when DEC started to deteriorate in the 90s. To fill the gap, there was at least one manufacturer making PDP compatible boards that you could plug into PC-AT if I remember correctly. They might be still around. Architectures like PDP-8, PDP-11, and HP-1000 that I supported long ago were designed for industrial use: power plants, electric power distribution, steel mills, etc. Why is that important to bring up here? Computer architecture. PC sucks! It's based on the 80's 8086 and beyond that. It was not designed for industrial use in the first place. At best, PCs were used as dumb terminals to mainframe size computers. PDP CPU, instruction set, memory, interrupts architecture, and Unibus is where the magic was. Interfaces/controllers were able to interrupt main program or OS based on their priority. Critical interfaces in the Unibus backplane had higher priority; disk drive controllers or DIO over printer or terminal, etc. What about LinuxCNC? You want to poll parallel port in a loop and watch it in fake scope? Count motor steps or it's encoder? Really? Or have smart motors or sensors tell exactly the tool position? CNC components are getting cheaper so we can afford more and more of them to assemble CNC machines or upgrade the existing ones and have LinuxCNC handle all of it. CNC systems also have sections that have higher priority than others. Comparing this to supercomputers is just silly. I don't care what any individual uses for their work as long as it does not scare the horses. I admire and understand that those who converted huge CNC machines 5+ years ago want to keep them running 'as is' as long as possible. Some machines might be used as fully functional museum artifacts and that's fine too. More power to them. My interest in robotics made me come across interesting but expensive solutions in that field. Robots loading and unloading material and parts are interacting with CNC machines. How would LinuxCNC work in that environment? Watch GUI? Not easily. Give me a break. Leave user GUI off the main system! https://www.universal-robots.com/how-tos-and-faqs/how-to/ur-how-tos/remote-control-via-tcpip-16496/ https://www.universal-robots.com/how-tos-and-faqs/how-to/ur-how-tos/real-time-data-exchange-rtde-guide-22229/ https://blog.universal-robots.com/how-to-get-robots-to-talk-to-each-other MODBUS anybody? No need for GUI all the time: https://www.zacobria.com/universal_robots_zacobria_remote_control.html Best (???) CNC would be able to run from the pendant like peripheral, X-terminal or some such as John Dammeyer and Chris mentioned in their extensive studies on this subject matter. Thanks to all for extensive research and comments elsewhere. I learned allot. I hope this message does not turn into "nuclear thread explosion" like the other one did. I keep some valuable messages for future reference. Sorry but top posting, untrimmed messages, and "signatures" that are 20 times longer than the answer don't fit that category. Think it this way; trim threads to make them easy to read on pocket size devices so we could use it as a source for project proposal to venture capital to fund it. Crowd source LinuxCNC upgrade perhaps? One way to handle ideas for improved LinuxCNC that are sprinkled in different threads could be collected in a form of CNC-RFC (CNC Request For Comments). Remember RFCs? Accounted for inflation; my $2.00.
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