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I have previously used 485 dongles but I think the mesa board connection is a cleaner wiring solution. I have used mb2hal but hm2-modbus is much easier for me.

I also found hm2-modbus/mesa refresh to be offer much faster refresh than hm2hal/USB dongle which was important with some spindle calculations I was using to calculate gear ratios.

My advise is get the correct firmware and enjoy the cleaner wiring, easier message setup, and faster response with the mesa connection.

Having done this on many occasions but on other CNC machines, its just using what you got to make what you need.
Ive turned near full spheres on the end of a stick using a 3/8" round button insert lathe tool clamped on whatever angle in a vice, probably easier with button inserts- easy to touch off on.

The more difficult part is coming up with the NC code to do it- its not really a linuxcnc thing as a CAM thing. I was using mastercam x9 at the time, created a program using an inverse offset chain to drive the spindle/x/z in the right motion to achieve the part. Depending on the accuracy you require- you may need to include cutter geometry/radiuses to do it. In my case above the button insert radius was added to my offset via telling mcam the tool was 3/8" ball nose.

Was also able to hold a tolerance of around ±0.0002" with some fiddling around in A2 tool steel. 
 

If you are using a USB to RS485 adapter you are not running a USB cable to your device. These adapters generally don't have a USB cable at all, and are just a dongle you plug into your computer's USB port. You then run a RS485 cable from there to your device. As to speed, I'm pretty sure USB is quite a bit faster than RS485.

It seems to me that we are all wandering around like blind people in the fog...
I suspect that the cause of the problems lies where no one tries to look for it...
Let me tell you a story.
Some time ago I bought integrated Lichuan Ethercat servo steppers.
I set up LinuxCNC and basically everything worked.
After some time, I decided to buy identical drives for a second machine, essentially identical, only slightly larger, so I used the configuration from the older one.
Everything worked, except the engines did not rotate and the drives did not want to enter the correct mode.
I started looking for the cause, changed various parameters and restarted LinuxCNC until they worked properly, but after another restart they did not work again.
I already knew that the engines were working, but something must have been misconfigured, so I started writing the configuration file from scratch, first with one drive, then adding others...
It worked and everything has been working as it should since then.
Except that these two files (working and not working) are basically identical, and the only difference is in the block order.
If Ethercat is so sensitive to syntax that changing the order causes it to fail, then you can look for tiny errors until you die...

sorry many work, simply late publish source code

I have done that on several occasions. I don't know it there is a name for it.

@MaxEkb77 is it possible to get the source of this?

Unfortunately this does not run my Linux box.

Thank you.

I used the code from the link above; you just need to add your own pins in config section(yours may be different). If it helps clarify things, I've attached my version of the code.

As for the difference between the SK4 and SK6—I've held both versions in my hands; the button layout is the same, but the circuit boards are different. So if you have the SK6, things might be different there.

Yes, I replaced the original rotary switches with encoders. I find encoders much more convenient—I don’t have to check their position every time; I can just turn them in the right direction. And they have a button; I’ve mapped pressing it to set FRO and SRO to 100%. Plus, if you use the stock ones, you won’t be able to adjust the settings from the screen (to avoid confusion in the readings, you’ll have to disable the on-screen sliders and leave only the current value displayed). That’s why we’ll always use only these rotary switches. With encoders, there’s no such problem—you can adjust the FRO and SRO both from the screen and using the encoders.

i can, if you ask a specific question. obviously i don't have a written specification to share.
but maybe it is possible to adapt your 4th axis to use a mitsubishi dtive/motor? would be much easier..

Thanks. A couple test runs of this look promising. I will try this out on an actual servo as soon as I find time.
I extracted the zip file then sha256summed it:
sha256sum servo_tuning 
9f2f5cb11561d13a6a3a4a62ac4788c9b2ea742844b31f8aeb7327cae0cb9cb9
next I marked it executable:
chmod +x servo_tuning
Then I started it:
./servo_tuning

Glad we finally got it

Yes, you would use 7i96s_pktv3.bin firmware.
 

Sometimes though the subnet mask does become important. I was allocated a 64 IP address range from my ISP way back when it was a dedicated dial up connection. Then the mask was important /26 or 255.255.255.192. But when setting up your own networks, just using 255 IP address are plenty and if you need seperate subnets, use the 192.168,  172.16 and 10 ranges or you can use 192.168.1.x, 192.168.2.x etc. You might need 2 seperate networks if you have a router with 2 WAN ports so you can have a failover connection or DMZ.

The default subnet mask for 10.n.n.n IP range is 8 or 255.0.0.0, and it will work with any subnet mask you set, be it 16 or 255.255.0.0 , or 24 or 255.255.255.0
I am sure that was not the issue.
Subnet is used to limit the the access to a certain IP range even when the same starting IP's are used, the thing nobody ever mentions here is:
Non routable IP ranges are :
10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255 (10.0.0.0/8) so roughly 16 million IP addresses
172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255 (172.16.0.0/12) so roughly 1 million IP addresses
192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255 (192.168.0.0/16) so roughly 65,000 addresses
Notice the default subnets, they can go up to 32 or 255.255.255.255 but that is useless as that will limit access to 0 (zero) IP's
You can set the subnet to 28 or 255.255.255.240 for the 10.n.n.n range, and still Mesa WILL work, as that will limit the IP block access to only 16 IP's, and since two of those are always reserved, you have 10.10.10.1 up to 10.10.10.14 that will work perfectly fine.
Etc etc, way to many variations there, but in general subnet is not very important ... until nothing works due to an error in it.

I have a couple of small parts that could/should really be done on a lathe, but my efforts at getting them right on my (manual) wood lathe have been... disappointing.

I heard recently of a technique I hadn't considered, using a 3-axis CNC machine:  Mount the stock to the collet of my  router spindle.  Mount a fixed cutter to the bed, oriented parallel to the X axis.  Adjust Y so that the cutter falls on the centerline of the spindle's (and stock's) spinning axis.  X will now control depth of cut, and Z will move the stock vertically lengthwise past the cutter.

First:  Does this technique have a name?  That might help my searching.

Second:  has anyone done this?  is it a worthwhile technique?

The parts in question are reproductions of antique hand crank handles.  Since they conveniently have a 1/4" bore down the middle, securing them to my 1/4" router collet will be relatively simple.  My bed is threaded-hole style, so pretty flexible in terms of mounting the cutting tool.  Just looking for ideas, cries of dismay, incredulity, encouragement -- whatever you all have on offer today.

paul