How does a fully configured Linuxcnc system compare to industrial controls.

The main issues I keep running into are:
The tool table isnt pinned to a tab, you can have multiple Instances open, which has caused a crash. That is my fault, but it’s easy to do.
It has no increment offset, adjustments to an offset have to be algebraically adjusted and manually inserted which leads to the next point.
There are multiple buttons, reload, rewrite ect. If they are not clicked in the correct order , the offset doesn’t get updated.Why have them all, seems like “ write “ would do.
There are no wear offsets, on a mill, not an issue, on a lathe, it’s a big deal as this is how you size your part.

In my case, I run a one man tool shop. Anything that makes things easier is a big plus. I’m used to being able to tweak an offset on the fly. In all fairness, I have a Tree vmc with a Dynapath 20, it doesn’t have any way to tweak an offset quick either, it’s great iron and if you are into conversational programming, it’s the bomb. I may or may not retrofit it. It’s goofy, but reliable.

I am for the most part very pleased with Lcnc and appreciate all the effort that everyone puts in and I don’t mean or intend to sound or be ungrateful. It just seems to me that most of the effort put into GUI’s are about making them sexy, not so much functional.
I am hoping a block of time opens up for me shortly, I’d like to attack the tool table issue.
For what it is worth , there is a guy who came up with a more standard feed hold , like Fanuc, Mitsubishi ect. It stops when you push the button, it would be nice to see that implemented. There is another thread also, it got over my head quick, but the idea was this guy had rewritten trajectory planner and claimed it reacted like a modern Fanuc. That’s cool, again, by the 2 page , it was past me.

Out of all the available gui’s Axis seems most stable. I tried Gmoccapy and didn’t care for it. I think GreenScreen has potential, but it’s gonna be work to to tweak it out.

I touch tools off also, on the Cinci with the tool probe and the Hardinge by touching them physically. My experience with any lathe, the offsets always need tweaks, tool pressure, temperature effect tight tolerances . I rarely get +/- .005 . Lots of +\- .001 and .0005.

I actually kinda liked the original GUI, TKemc.

Not a pro or very experience user and still quite new to LinuxCNC. Just wanted to add to the many comments before that I am successfully using G41 / G42. I did not find any problems within LinuxCNC and the toolpath is also displayed correctly. However, I do have some differences to the visualisation in CAMWorks (within SolidWorks) regarding the leadin and leadout moves.

As for the learning curve: yes, it might not be easy at times to find a solution for everything and research, implementation and testing is very time consuming. The forum and the community is a great help though and I benefit from deep-diving into the control.

I would like to see (paid) professional support for LinuxCNC or retrofits. Of course, an external service can't be made accountable for a retrofitted machine with a self built control but still I would have loved to pay someone by the hour helping me configuring LinuxCNC when I got stuck. So if there are people interested in these kind of jobs, please let me know. I think it would be a Pro on the list of Dbsharp and helpful for me as well.

I am thinking of offering LinuxCNC related services with my company but we are still too new to LinuxCNC to be consideres professionals.

On the machines I have with Lcnc , I program them offline with HSM works. Not having the standard lathe canned cycles , this is a must.

I touch my tools off , if I have a part with open tolerance, touching them off the probe of taking a cut and storing the offset is good Enuff. If I have some thing tight, I back the offset off .005 do my finish cuts and adjust accordingly. This is where wear offsets come in, rather then having to go thru resetting an offset , I can simply back the tool off in the wear offset, cut, check and adjust accordingly. I make mostly short runs, 50 of something is a lot , mostly 1-5 pcs.
When either machine is stone cold, they will repeat with in .0002. When they warm up, they move. Keep in mind, I can make a part that is a 10” dia x 4” thick piece of stainless, and it gets 80% of it hollowed out, by the time the machine has hogged this out, the offsets need tweaking.

I used to have an Ikegai FX-25N , it had a Fanuc 5t, no decimal point, no crt, no fixture offsets. You set each tool with G50( like G92). You could then use the offsets as wear offsets or you could offset all the rest of the tools off the first tool. That was a recipe for a wreck.

I learned to hand G code machines in 1991 and stuck with it for a long time, truthfully, a good model and some decent software makes for a much easier life. There are things that have to be hand programmed, to much trouble to explain to the cam system what you wanna do.

Depending on the skillset and availability, I would consider anything between 40 and 100 USD per hour as reasonable.

I totally understand many people do this out of passion and do not want this to become a paid job. That's fine with me and I really like the spirit of it. However, from a business point of view it makes sense to use a shortcut if it saves more time than it costs in equivalent.