Time to jump in the water.....

i would just look for a pc motherboard thats lets say mid market and give it a go , especialy if you have some laying around or friends throwing them out
over all , if you go with the mesa card configuration the max jitter etc , is not a major problem , and also many people see if as a gauge of ' my machines better than yours '
, you will be better off with a single to dual core with about 2gig of memory and and option of a graphic's slot ,

over all linuxcnc is not a hogger , and does not need to run on the latest and fastest machine going , the work it actualy does is realy quite medium rate
so a all singing all dancing pc is just over kill , yes you may come across a board that it does not like , in that case just swap it out , and try another from the junk box

i run 4 machines here all using sata 8gig solidstate drives , and a mininmal install on the actual machines , i keep a backup of the configurations on a spare usb stick
just in case ,

i personaly use ethernet for connecting to my windows network to transfer files etc , rather than wireless , but for the simple problem of interference with running motors .
and i use the remote access program to jump around machines or i use tightvnc to access the windows pc .

i just use standard keyboard and mouse , but i have used wireless mouse and keyboards without any problem , and joysticks are ok , although i built a switch panel on my machines
with jog buttons , so tend to not use joysticks , but just a personal preference , wireless cnc style keypads are a good idea , look in the wiki for one thats been added to linuxcnc
which works well .

touch screens are fine too , but can be a pain to interface, although this is becoming better , and with a move to 12.04 or newer this is much easier
as many kernels have touch screen support built in .

I have a shop full of equipment using Fanuc controls. I like the controls. A computer itself just dosent hack it. I have Linux cnc on one machine and it is not user friendly to use from the machine. It is very easy to run part programs from and in all the other PC related functions it is vastly surperior to Fanuc but in my opinion a user interface on the machine with all the normal functions such as jog MPG, program edit so on and so forth is necessary for a non hobby machine. The thing I dislike about Fanuc is when it breaks it is difficult to fix without calling out the repair guy and is usually very expensive. However Fanuc controls are very, very slow. It takes seconds and minutes to transfer programs in and out and every function seems very slow compaired to Linux cnc. So im not too sure where the latency issue arises. Im not a computer guy but id like to know when latency becomes a problem.
Im not very happy with my one conversion. It needs AC servos instead of the steppers I put in. But even thou I installed it on a board with really high latency, I had no problems. It cuts just as accurately as it did before the conversion just not as fast. Im going to update the machine I converted to ac servos. Id like to use yaskawa servo packs because Ive been using them for a long time but it seems like there is interface problems so if anyone had any ideas id appreciate it.

stepper speed is related to the voltage supplied to the stepper drives , so without knowing the setup it's difficult to comment further
if it is controlled via the printerport this is yet another area that could affect the speed as well and any optocouplers in the path ..

fanuc controls on machines are usualy microcontrollers and not pc's if they are of the old type , and with considerably less memory available
so theirs no comparison to pc control systems such as Linuxcnc .

Something like this is clean and simple for a touchscreen:

It looks great, but I would have two concerns. One would be dirt and oil accumulating on screen, and the other would be touch offs. It seems too far away to see the tool.

I got a long way to go before I have to worry about that.

I know. Just saying.

andypugh wrote:

jimmy111 wrote:

In my opinion a user interface on the machine with all the normal functions such as jog MPG, program edit so on and so forth is necessary for a non hobby machine..

You can have an MPG with LinuxCNC. In fact you can't actually use the "Touchy" touchscreen interface without an MPG.

What is an MPG?

BTW: How do you like your touchscreen? I saw pics of it off of CNCzone or somewhere? It looks pretty good. I think it is on a Lagun mill.

I have never actually used a CNC lathe so I am new to the interfaces. I have used a Tormach mill, but it has been a while. I have gotten pretty used to the simple Eztrak interface. I do like simple.

MPG= Manual pulse generator.
It is a the revolving dial on most cnc machines that allow you to move an axis at a time by just manually turning the wheel.
There is one on that touch screen video at the bottom left of the touch screen.

I am starting to put some BOMS together and get some pricing.

I started to look at ballscrews. The engraver will not need them. The mill will be a ground C5 or better since it is only 5" of travel.

My question is on the lathe. There are several low cost sources of C7 rolled ballscrews available. Above that they seem to get expensive quick, especially in the Z.

Realistically, my lathe is a 12X36 Chinese clone lathe. Things will flex. I deal with this manually by test cuts. If my finish pass is .02 DOC. I do a few rough passes to determine flex. Can't I just do the same with a less ballscrew. My thoughts are that the C7 ballscrews should be pretty dam repeatable, just not as accurate. Once I have one part set up accurately all following parts should hopefully repeat to a tolerance of .003/6in [.08mm/150mm]. It does not seem to make sense to put $2k of ballscrews on a $2k machine.

Thoughts? Recommendations?