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During all this progress we also setup my wife's shop with warm and cold water

and what once was my temporary home is now the shelter for our old sofa and her loom

all that was left was to get sone beer and cake

set up the benches 

and wait in the courtyard by the fire with the dog for the friend to arrive

then it was time for the lathe.

getting here under power and leveled was a bit more challenging. then there was another issue. In the old shop I could have a hoist on a roof beam to change the chucks... here not, so I needed another solution:

An old winch, one multifix mount and a pickup crane did the trick

 

followed by the battery powered shit

and the welding table 

then the first cnc machine was ready to get leveled and under power:

and for the first time since I started setting up this machine it got its two vices mounted:

so it can be used soon hopefully and also I can start working on fully integrate the 4th axis.

 

having the the wall ducts allow also to semi integrate the air lines

then it was time to set everything up beginning with the 3D Printers

manual machines

the there was really long time no progress, cause focus was on the house, which brings us to the point two months ago, where instead of going on our vacation we made a big leap with our shops.
Beginning by further insulating mine.

and finishing the walls

setting up first work benches and begin wiring the whole shop

this was the time where the house became uninhabitable an I moved into the shop

which showed that workbenches are great temporary kitchens:

 

the old barn windows were really drafty and I want the shop to be more usable in winter I installed additional modern windows. 

 after getting the breaker box in my house 

 I could setup the new boxes in the workshop  

 

Then it was moving day, the crew arrived with two truck and a forklift, I would haul my trailer in addition.

Loading went really fast with on truck on the street and on in the courtyard. at the new house both needed to fit in the courtyard cause the street is to narrow to park a truck there.

first we unloaded my wife's carding machine to the 2nd floor

where I could move it around on my own:

while the professionals brought in the mill and the lathe.

this was moving day.

looks like renovating and moving while having a full time job takes much longer than expected.
But finally this weekend I was able invite over some friends to celebrate the latest incarnation of ma shop.
a lot has happend in the last years to get the shop to the state wehere I can continue using and working on my linuxcncn machines.

first step was to close up the hole for the never installed window and it would be blocked by a machine anyway

the it was time to insulate nd cover the first wall cause here will land the heavy machine I can't move on my own.

the it was tie to haul the first smaller machines by myself 

the wood shop and the fabric shop of my wife well be upstairs so I hoisted them up

First, a gift - a script that launches both windows with one click.Everything seems to be working, but I found some errors in the settings.
Usually the Z axis looks for the limit switch at the top, here it goes down... You need to change the sign of the HOME_SEARCH_VELOCITY value to the opposite.
The work area is set to extremely small, it is unlikely that the real work will fit. When changing the field, you also need to set virtual limits.
And the worst thing is that I have an offset of several millimeters in the Z axis between Axis and the simulator. I don't know where this comes from. Of course, you can add some value in the material settings, but this is not very elegant.

Choosing a computer for LinuxCNC is always a lottery and it is impossible to give any universal advice.
A computer that works great for you may not work for me with my version of Linux, my version of kernel and my version of LinuxCNC...
For example, I use AMD computers (A10 and Ryzen), also with Realtec NIC and MESA. I have read several times on this forum that they do not and will not work with LinuxCNC and especially MESA, but they work flawlessly and I am very happy with them.
Even if you gave a specific computer model, motherboard revision, operating system type, kernel version, LinuxCNC version, it would make some sense, but tomorrow some developer will change something and something may stop working...

You are welcomed, always.
P.S.
Wait till you figure out what you can do in HAL !
That is the main thing why i liked it so much back then, for me it just clicks "connect this pin to this pin" and it works!

Hi @dbtayl,

Except for the adaptive clearing issue you are facing (unable to clear outside model) , we were able to replicate everything else and make the necessary changes. 

You can save it as a project file and mail it to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Thank you for your help.

Kind Regards,
George

**A Few Months With LinuxCNC / QtPlasmaC — Follow-Up and Thank You**

Back in July, I posted about the PC and realtime issues I encountered while converting my home-built plasma table from MASSO to LinuxCNC / QtPlasmaC. Now that I have been using it for a few months, I wanted to follow up and, more importantly, thank the LinuxCNC community.

The short version is that I am very happy I made the conversion.

At this point I have cut roughly a dozen actual parts and spent a large number of hours setting up the machine, troubleshooting it, experimenting with it, and generally just playing with it. None of those hours were wasted.

The Dell OptiPlex 7060 with Intel Ethernet has proven to be the “boring” control PC I was looking for. After some additional tuning, including CPU isolation and changes to how my camera project delivers frames, I have been able to run QtPlasmaC and FabScan together for hours without realtime, Mesa, watchdog, or Smart Serial faults.

I still stand behind the main point of my original post: with Mesa Ethernet, the details of the PC matter more than raw horsepower. The NIC, driver, BIOS and power-management behavior, and long-term realtime stability are more important than whether the computer looks powerful on paper. A modest business-class PC with Intel Ethernet has worked much better for me than the newer mini PC I originally tried.

What has changed since July is my understanding of LinuxCNC itself.

LinuxCNC / QtPlasmaC can definitely be challenging to set up and dial in. There are a lot of layers, and there are plenty of opportunities to configure something incorrectly. At first, that can make it seem unpredictable.

After working with it for a while, I have found the opposite to be true. LinuxCNC is actually very predictable. When something does not work, there is normally a logical reason for it. It may be a signal polarity, a HAL connection, a configuration path, a file permission, a post-processor issue, or a setting I did not completely understand, but there is usually an identifiable cause.

More importantly, LinuxCNC gives me the tools to find that cause. I can look at the HAL signals, see the machine state, follow what the controller is doing, and change the logic when necessary. Once I began to understand how the pieces fit together, troubleshooting became much less intimidating.

I also think LinuxCNC is easier to get into now than it was a few years ago. One of my previous problems with Linux-based projects was that a traditional Google search would often return information that was several versions out of date. AI-assisted searches have helped me sort through that, especially when I include the specific LinuxCNC and QtPlasmaC versions in the question.

The documentation also seems better than I remember, although it is possible I am just getting older, slowing down, and actually reading it this time.

The QtPlasmaC feature set has lived up to my original expectations. The material handling, probing, THC operation and visibility, Arc OK handling, cut recovery, scribing, hole processing, and operator feedback all feel like they were designed specifically for plasma cutting rather than added to a general-purpose CNC interface afterward.

Cut recovery is probably one of my favorite examples. If a cut stops, I can use Reverse to back up along the actual cut path, stop wherever I want, and press Cycle Start. QtPlasmaC then performs the normal plasma-start sequence, including waiting for Arc OK before continuing. When cutting larger parts, that is a very useful production feature rather than just a convenience.

The openness has also allowed me to do things that would be difficult or impossible with a closed controller. I was able to connect and configure my existing MASSO MPG pendant through the Mesa card, integrate the THCAD-2, customize the QtPlasmaC interface, and continue developing FabScan alongside the machine control.

FabScan was one of the main reasons I started looking at LinuxCNC in the first place. It uses a USB camera mounted to the machine and LinuxCNC motion to trace existing parts and templates, with the eventual goal of exporting usable geometry. It is still very much an ongoing experiment, but LinuxCNC gives me access to the machine state and motion control needed to build it. I am not limited to whatever features the controller manufacturer decided to include.

For perspective, I have used GRBL, ChiliPeppr/TinyG, Mach3, Mach4, MASSO, Langmuir Systems’ MR-1 Cut Control, and now LinuxCNC. If I build another CNC machine, I am almost positive it will be a LinuxCNC machine.

That is not because I now think every other controller is bad. MASSO, for example, remains a very solid and reliable controller. For someone who wants an appliance-like system, does not need much customization, and stays within the intended configuration, it is extremely easy to recommend.

The difference, in my opinion, can be summed up this way:

MASSO is easier until you need something it does not support.

LinuxCNC is harder until you understand it—then very little is off-limits.

Finally, I want to thank the LinuxCNC community.

A project like this only exists because people contribute their time to writing the software, developing QtPlasmaC, maintaining the documentation, designing hardware such as the Mesa cards, and answering questions from people like me who are still learning how all the pieces fit together.

The help I received made a real difference. Even when the answer turned out to be a single setting, an inverted input, or changing a 1 to a 0 after several hours of troubleshooting, someone was willing to help explain what that setting actually did and why it mattered.

When I wrote the original post in July, I hoped my experience might help the next person avoid a few days of chasing intermittent PC and realtime gremlins. After a few months of real use, my conclusion is that the “boring PC” advice still stands—but LinuxCNC / QtPlasmaC has absolutely been worth the effort.

Thank you to everyone who helped me get this far.

Looks like register 2 sets the frequency. 7 is the actual frequency
at speed will use the near component to compare the two.
I did a detailed Youtube video showing how to use mb2hal recently. You will find it on my @MrRodW channel,
modbus lete you read concecutive registers in one call.