Noob looking to get feet wet and hands dirty

Hello anyone,

I am new to LinuxCNC but not fresh off the linux turnip truck. I have not fussed around with CNC for about a decade.

What I would like to know is can I get to grips with linuxcnc on a small scale with toy parts and take that knowledge to real equipment?

The reason I ask is because I am thinking that once I get linux cnc installed I need motors to test on and might have to do this on small parts laying around the house like printer parts or basic electronic kit steppers. Perhaps make a simple pen plotter to start.

Fist of all I like "not fresh off the linux turnip truck".....I'll add that one to my vocab if if it requires I have to forget something like my own age.

For ease get hold of a "real stepper" driver (low power simple ones can be had on ebay for about Ten ish dollars depending how far away your are from the sun on the earth). May cost a dollar or two more but so much simpler to get up and running.

Some of those "electronic kit" stepper drivers are not much more than a H-Bridge. And require a bit more than a simple step dir type stepgen setup. There was a thread a month or 2 ago highlighting the complication in going this route. Elektor did publish something a while back that took step-dir inputs, but one would hazzard a guess this would be an expensive route.

My real "aha moment" came when I wanted to make a pyvcp panel to test a driver board I made. That really pounded in how hal components fitted in (I have a thick skull due to too many knocks from league and off road bikes) .

Getting the stepper to turn and run g-code through axis is rather simple, the more taxing parts come when wanting to hookup an mpg or a simpler panel with a few buttons, for the most part this can be done using one of the sim configs and going from there. That's how I usually start....and really I'm just starting to get the hang of it.

Now there are many forum members with way more knowledge than myself, who may even suggest that what I'm suggesting is rubbish\bollocks or whatever the local dialect equivalent is......listen to them cos I sure will.