Hardware Reccomendations

I am looking at converting my Hugong Plasma Cutter (www.hugongwelds.com/product/detail113.htm) over to LinuxCNC.

The plasma cutter runs servo motors for the gantry (2 for X axis and 1 for Y axis) and DC motors without any feedback for the THC and an air scribe. The Air scribe has an ohmic sensor for height control.

The servo motors are controlled by Panasonic MBDJT2210 220V motor controllers.

My reasons for wanting to change to LinuxCNC are twofold. 1) The Hugong software does not allow Plasma cut height to be set without THC, which means small holes have to be cut at pierce height, producing excessive taper.

2) I would like to add milling capability to the plasma cutter so that critical holes can be cut undersize, and then milled to the correct size - eg a 20mm hole could be cut at 19mm and then milled out to 20mm.

As I am new to both LinuxCNC and Linux in general, can anyone recommend a suitable computer as a starting point? Will I need a Mesa card as well?

Thanks

Although a little pricey, or not, the Odroid H2+ maybe an option. And there is an ISO to suit.

Thanks for the replies.

It looks like I have a lot of reading to do to get my head around linuxcnc.

The Odroid H2+ is about $240 here in Australia, so not the cheapest, but I am happy to pay if it is going to be a reliable option and easier to setup.

Thanks

Notice the Southern Cross Flag as my Avatar ?
Guess where I'm from

It's cheaper to buy the Odroid directly from HardKernel, even including shipping, than the local suppliers.
Odroid H2+
2 x 4GB Ram
1 set SATA data & power cables to suit
Extra BIOS battery
External Power Button
Power Supply

AUD $304 shipped, delivery time was 6 days from placing of order to having it up & running.
I opted out of the emmc module and went for Crucial P1 500GB NVME drive which added $99 from a local shop on a Sunday. Could have gone for a SSD or a cheaper NVME but that was all they had in stock. I reckon if I did order something cheaper I'd be waiting longer than 6 days...aint AusPost great ?

We Aussies are taking over the Forum!

I bought mine locally with 4 Gb RAM, tiny 64 Gb SSD, Wifi and power supply. I Don't think Linuxcnc will benefit from 8 gb RAM but the Beagle might have more insight into that.

What Mesa boards are you guys using with the Odroid?

htdave wrote:

What Mesa boards are you guys using with the Odroid?

I have not used any!

Any Mesa ethernet board will work just as well as any other. Popular options are the 7i96 (limited I/O,no dedicated spindle control great for Plasma), 7i76e (more IO, 2 dedicated MPG inputs, spindle control with encoder)

Or for servos, 7i92 and attached 7i77

Then there is the new 7i95 and.....

Currently my setup is 7i92 7i76 7i73 with a 7i74 & 7i83 on the bench for the AC servo drive for the spindle.....as can be seen I don't have a plan.
To be fair I just bought the 7i73 for fun and to mess around with.

It depends on what you need. I needed an analog +-10V signal for servos. And some Io‘s in the control and some Io‘s in the electrical cabinet, so I opted for 7I92H, 7I77, 7I74 (which might have been Not necessary but convenient), 7I70 and 7I71.
But is is a machining center with a lot of IO‘s and things to play around with and today there are more Ethernet cards available.
So First I would check what Io‘s your machine has and how the servo drives are controlled.