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Hello Tom,

Maslow advertizes CNC'ing of wood sheets and that's what I need to do so let me see how far I can go with it and LinuxCNC. BTW Maslow goes at about 1 inch per second so there are no kinematics.

I'll start by locating the LinuxCNC documentation starting point(s).

Thanks Tom for the input,
Tom

Hello @cornholio,

You are right - I need to move on to LinuxCNC. I noticed a new CNC machine. It's called "Maslow". Google it as "Maslow CNC".

I want to use it for cutting out frame members for wooden boats.

Does LinuxCNC support it or does something need to be done?

Tom

 
Hi,
My local makerspace has a pair of donated Journeyman 325s. I am retrofitting one with LinuxCNC. We have a small form factor PC that should work with a 7I97T I purchased a while back.
My plan is to leave the wiring alone as much as possible. Using 3 DB37 breakouts and a DB15 breakout. Later I will use more of the existing wiring to wire front panel switches.
The number of IOs seems very limited with only 5 relay outputs and maybe 10 inputs. The input wiring is not very clear in the machine drawings so I will have to trace them out for verification.

I have two different wiring diagrams if anyone needs them.

Linked is a Google Sheet with wiring notes.
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l1su5IxQ...SPE/edit?usp=sharing
 

My RPi5 kit has come up. A book report:

The full kit name as listed in Amazon is:

  -- iUniker - Extreme Starter Kit for Raspberry Pi 5 - (8GB RAM - 128GB Storage Edition)
  
Definitely a learning experience (several delicate operations but that's probably good if you are needing to learn).

• A critical concern with all electronics not designed to handle it is electrostatic discharge (ESD). Shuffle across a rug and touch the bare board and your new RPi5 may never come up. The RPi5 specs make a nod toward ESD protection but one way to get by ESD, if you don't have a special "static discharge mat", is to lay down a very slightly damp cloth and work on it.
•  I only received a 64 GB SD card instead of a 128 GB SD Card.
•  I only received one video cable instead of 2.
•  Once installed, the fan connector needs to be inserted into a plug on the board. The plug seemed to elude me for quite a while but it's there. Be very sure of which way around the plug needs to be oriented.
• The 4 USB connectors are very, very difficult to insert into. I worried about the stress on the board. I opted for a hard-wired keyboard/mouse combo and had to use 2 USB connectors. It supports wireless keyboard/mouse combos if you have them in pairing mode at system boot time.

Finally, it came up, started, and took my breath away. Very cool.
Tom

At the risk of repeating myself, Tom, thank you for being hell bent on helping this project.
BTW, my name is also Tom.
Reading your posts i am baffled at where did/do you get the info, as
-LinuxCNC project has always provided a ready made image, since the time of "Brain Dead Install" (that was the name), and Ubuntu 6.04, 8.04, 10.04, then switched to Debian as Ubuntu started causing issues with logos and trade marks
-From 8.04 and up till now, all those images can be used in Live mode, without installing anything, and YES they can run the actual machines in Live mode
-Installing those images is as easy as any other Linux distro, no knowledge or sysgen required
-Included wizards are easy to use for anyone with a faint idea of CNC workings or a bit of reading, took me 2 minutes flat to have the machine working the first time i used it with Ubuntu 8.04 i think, over 15 years ago, but i have extensive electronics experience so i do not count
-Maslow should not be an example of simple CNC as it uses ropes to move, making it limited in many ways and hard for humans to figure kinematics, any XYZ hobby machine is simpler to understand
-
And in general, nothing is easy when dealing with a 15 ton machine with electronics, hydraulics, pneumatic, vacuum tool changers, pallet changers, and multiple safety trips to prevent from making minced meat out of humans...
Yet, LinuxCNC makes that possible for plenty of inexperienced users with a bit of time and effort, just have a look in the "show your stuff" section.

www.omc-stepperonline.com/
Might be worth having a look at. I used them in the past, no issues with the drivers I've purchased. Being in Australia shipping is always through the roof, but hopefully that wont be the case for Canada.

Nice place but spent too much time partying when I visited for a month or so in the early 90's.

I was going to suggest an FT2232 (for more reliable I've found than the USB Blaster clones, and faster under Linux than the Genuine Xilinx PP porgrammer), as that what I use, along with openFPGALoader, but seeing that it doesn't support JTAG for the Efinity FPGAs I decided to let it slide. Plus I was sure if the SPI programming method was usable with the Mesa boards.

I think the biggest issue is your trying to jump in without actually using Linuxcnc, if you did, you have used the configuration utilities. Once one has a working config, one does not need to doing anything with it, unless of course you add features. Everything need not be in one huge config, it can be split. In fact you would have also investigated the various supplied simualtion configs.

The core devs will raise issues on github, casual ones may raise an issue on github or discuss it on the forum, other users will raise an issue on the forum, and the devs that hang out on the forum will usually look into it and take it from there.

The build system does have tests, I believe the buildbot system does compilation and run tests. Again this is a dev thing.

Once again the image building utilities are generally only run and new images released when major changes come about, say when there is a "point release".

I truly think if your looking to make some wholesale changes the better option would be to go to the Linuxcnc homepage, find the links for the mailing lists and sign up and put your ideas across there.

As for getting Linuxcnc up & running. Images exist for amd64 platform & the RPi5 & Rpi4 platforms. RPi platforms are simple the image is dd'd to a sd card and you boot up.
The amd64 platform is just as simple to run as a "live" you dd the image to a USB device and you boot to a live session to "have a play around" and do a "ballpark" latency test. Installation requires a reboot and the you run the installer, being the debian installer it is no different to installing debian.
32 bit images are still available, but generally not used much (as far as I am aware), so Linuxcnc can be run on older hardware.

There's probably thousands of users that have never used for the forum as it "just works for them" or they can get all the info required from the docs or internet searches.

I'm starting to think that your discussion is getting quite off topic, you seem more interested not so much as using Linuxcnc but a shake up in the general way support happens. I'm starting to get the feeling I did when the whole CoC thing was forced upon a lot of OSS projects. This is something I will not discuss as my views will by in violation of the CoC.

And quite honestly I think the mailing lists would be a better place for this, mind this is just my opinion.

Now if you require any advice regarding practical use or installation of Linuxcnc I'm quite happy to help, but I have no further interest in what seems to be your main point of interest.

Best Wishes

claytoncramer wrote:

%
g17 g20 g54
g1 z1.0 f25
g1 x.13000000000000000000 y.50000000000000000000 f25
g1 z0 y.500 f25
g1 z-0.01 f25
g2 x y.50000000000000000000 i.43500000000000000000 j0 x.13000000000000000000 y.50000000000000000000 j0 i-.43500000000000000000
g1 z1.0 f25

%

G2 line has an orphaned X with no value.

What video on youtube?
It might be helpful to others ...

Does the machine have separate homing and limit switches?
If yes, the home_latch_velocity is set reversed, so add or remove - in front of the value.

I have LinuxCNC set up for a 30-year-old 3-axis (XYZ) CNC router machine.

I can jog an axis and the home and limit switches work fine.

However, when I attempt to move an axis, the axis moves away from the home switch and then finally presses the limit switch.

The axes normally move in the correct direction (pressing left arrow moves the X axis left, etc.).

Why is this happening?

I may have solved it. There are dozens of G2/G3 examples on YouTube and only one seems to provide useful instruction.

If it's losing counts you might try decreasing the encoder sample rate
(which has the effect of increasing the input filter time constant)

Since this is global and affects all axis, one trick is to decrease the sample
rate by a factor of 5 and disable the encoder filter on all but the tool changer
encoder. (keeping the main axis encoders with the same filter time but
increasing the tool changer encoder filter time constant by a factor of 5)

I am in Canada.

I have a 3-axis CNC machine from around 30 years ago that I am refurbishing.

The original stepper drivers are all broken and horrendously inefficient.

I have purchased one "DM556" driver off Ebay that works with every axis.

I am totally certain that alll other components (stepper motors, parallel port card, power supply, breakout board, and mechanical parts) work without problem.

Power supply options are: ~40VDC and ~40VAC

The motors are 4.6A steppers.

I need a driver capable of 4.6A (at least)

Where should I buy 2 more drivers for the other two axes?

I am not buying from Ebay ever again.

I am not dealing with USPS shipping either.