Newbie trying to set up and test run milling machine

Hi folks,

I've been working on a CNC conversion for a small bench top milling machine for a while. I've now finally finished up configuring LinuxCNC on my PC, for the Mesa board. Each machine's axis can now be moved, or jogged from the Axis GUI. So everything seems to be in the right working order.

I want to load up a simple test program to see how the machine runs. Is there a simple program sample included in LinuxCNC I can use to do this task? What are the basic steps in getting the machine to operate? I still yet to have any experience with a CNC type machine and its operation, which is what made me decide to do the conversion so I would have a learning platform to practice on.

Get your hands on "CNC In the Workshop" by Marcus Bowman and checkout his website
www.cncintheworkshop.com/Home.html

Hi book is pretty much machine agnostic but does included some of the differences between Mach & Linuxcnc. His website also contains download links for articles he has written for MEW.

Something I've been thinking about is the backlash compensation. I remember when I went through my LinuxCNC's mill configuration setup, I did put in some value for that to account for the backlash in my machine. My machine use lead screws so there is some small amount of mechanical backlash in all axes.

When I get a g code file processed from a CAD/CAM software like Fusion 360, and run the program on my machine, does LinuxCNC automatically know to compensate for backlash for all the applicable tool paths for improved accuracy? Or do I need to make modification to the g code file for the machine to do that?

Linuxcnc will compensate not the cam software.
I would remove backlash as much as possible mechanically. If you can't fit ballscrews, split nuts or cast moglice nuts can work okay. I assume even with compensation, pockets will have flats at the quadrant transitions if there is slop in the mechanics.