New here with some questions

Hi, I'm new here and also and i'm migrating from 3d printers to CNC and plasma cutting.

I already have 3 Nema23 (X & Y) and a Nema17 (Z axis), some rails and a ballscrfew ( for the Z)
Of course I have the drivers for the motors and a breakout board from parallel port to the drivers and I/Os (limit swiches and relays)

I'm thinking of using my old Dell laptop as it has a // port and some USB as well, it's already running on linux.

My idea is to have a roughly 4x2x1 (limited space) usable work volume and have multiple heads, 3d printing, CNC, plasma and knife.

For plasma it has to be fast, for cnc it has to be rigid and torque, hence the 23s.
X & Y will be belt driven, 2 for moving the gantry and 1 for the head unit, then i'll use the ballscrew for the Z with the nema17.


So my basic question is " is it possible" with linuxCNC, if i need multiple / separate boot configurations ?? I dont want to use a Rambo or a Pi system as i would like a realtime process where i can modify / intevene on the fly if anything needs to be changed.
What software are you using for this ?

As for my self, I'm a tech in the metrology area, i drive a jeep so i'm a part time mechanic and I make steel / wood furniture as a hobby using my Kemppi MIG welder.


Tnx for the help

Tnx Tommy, 3d printing is not essential as i already have a printer, but the other stuff is more critical

I'm not sure if it would work for you but Linuxcnc supports multiple spindles and we have done some work in the plasmac config to support air engravers and drills in addition to Plasma using this feature. You need to load a tool to set the offsets to centre the selected "spindle" where you are working. So it might be possible to do what you want to do with a single configuration.

And yes, the linuxcnc configs sit in a folder structure and you can choose the folder and ini file in that folder from the Linuxcnc chooser. It would pay you to experiment with linuxcnc without a machine attached and play with the simulations which will give you an idea how this works.

I might do that, try out with some simulations 1st to see if everything works pretty well.