Advanced Search

Greetings,
This is my first post so I'm hoping I done break any protocols...

I have converted a 1959 vintage Centec AutoMill (3 axis horizontal milling machine) to CNC using LinuxCNC 2.9.10 Debian 13 Trixie PREEMPT-RT on a Raspberry Pi5 with 8 gig of ram, directly controlling three GeckoDrive 201x stepper drives via the Pi's GPIO pins. It is working very well as the Gecko 201x works with 3.3 volt logic and I very pleased with its performance. No need for a MESA board or any kind of logic level shifting.

I recently read that the Micro SD cards used in the Pi are not well suited to handle lots of read/write activity, and over time will fail.

Can anyone tell me if LinuxCNC does a lot of writing/reading of things like temporary files during the running of the machine?

TIA   Greg

for those who are interested here is a new config that has the simulated motion in it

it's based off the lathe fanuc axis gui that linuxcnc comes with

you have two options.  you can just unzip and copy and paste the sim config. into your linuxcnc configs folder and then use the config picker to run it.  that takes 2 min and like 10 mouse clicks.  for those who want to understand it and hopefully add this to their own machines there is the manual option where you can copy the right files into the sim config and actually understand it.

i just used Claude Ai for the whole project and got it to spit out the text file that is in the config.  here is the first bit from the text file.   cheers Andrew 

===============================================================================
 RUNNING THE BIG BLUE CONVERSATIONAL TAB ON A SIMULATED LATHE
 How to graft it onto LinuxCNC's own  sim / axis / lathe-fanucy  sample config
 Written 2026-08-07.  Every step below was built and tested before writing.
===============================================================================

WHY THIS FILE

---

The big-blue-lathe config drives real servos through a Mesa 7i92 and needs a
ClassicLadder E-stop chain, gearbox solenoids and sensors to even come out of
E-stop.  A friend with no hardware cannot jog it or run a program.

So instead of shipping the machine config, we bolt the CONVERSATIONAL TURNING
TAB onto a stock LinuxCNC sim.  You get a machine that homes instantly, jogs,
runs programs, does manual tool changes and simulates a spindle - and the
Turning tab writes exactly the same G-code it writes on the real lathe.

The base is  sim/axis/lathe-fanucy  rather than  sim/axis/lathe , because
lathe-fanucy already ships the T-word / wear-offset remap plumbing that big
blue depends on:  the REMAP = T line, the [PYTHON] section, remap.py and
toplevel.py.  That is most of the fiddly part done for you.


===============================================================================
 TWO WAYS TO DO THIS - PICK ONE
===============================================================================

  ROUTE A - USE THE READY-MADE CONFIG.  Two minutes, nothing to type.
 

---

  If you have  big-blue-sim.zip , everything below has already been done for
  you.  The whole finished config is in it.  On the test PC:

      mkdir -p ~/linuxcnc/configs
      unzip big-blue-sim.zip -d ~/linuxcnc/configs/
      linuxcnc ~/linuxcnc/configs/big-blue-sim/big-blue-sim.ini

  That is it.  Skip to STEP 4 - RUN IT.

  You do NOT need to create the lathe-fanucy sample config first.  The zip
  already contains its remap.py and toplevel.py, which is the only thing that
  was ever taken from it.

  ROUTE B - BUILD IT BY HAND.  Steps 1 to 3 below.
 

---

  Do this if you have not got the zip, or if you want to understand what is
  in it, or if you are redoing this on a future LinuxCNC version.

  The only difference between the two routes is the NAME.  Route A gives you
      ~/linuxcnc/configs/big-blue-sim/big-blue-sim.ini
  and Route B gives you
      ~/linuxcnc/configs/lathe-fanucy/lathe-fanucy.ini
  with identical contents.  Wherever this file says "lathe-fanucy.ini" below,
  read it as "whichever of those two you have".

  NOTE FOR THE BIG BLUE MACHINE ITSELF: copying this text file into the
  big-blue-lathe config folder does nothing on its own - it is only a set of
  instructions.  The sim is a SEPARATE config directory.  Nothing here changes
  or touches the real machine's config.

thank u soo much

@farley,
No double posting.

Excellent. I will add it and a little writeup in the official docs.

Hi, I saw your post about the SL2-100 interpreter — I'm an FPGA engineer working on decoding the same protocol and finding solid documentation is really tough. Would you mind sharing how far you got, or any pointers on the frame structure / encoding you figured out? Totally understand if it's not shareable. Wishing you smooth progress on the project either way!

Just re-read this topic ... twice, i am confused on many levels...
If you want just to test use the live version, do not install it.
And that never asks you for a "password" ... that is a thing since the inception of personal computers.

Okay, sorry

F-WORD = F = feed rate, it can not have a negative value as far as i know, although there might have been talks about that for EDM probably, but i do not recall the end result.

@CNC_Manni
This is the third post with the same subject, although one is in German, abd this one has more info, so do not do multiple posts, that makes a mess for us and for whoever tries to help you.

This is a duplicate of this topic but in German language.
forum.linuxcnc.org/42-deutsch/59075-nvem-v5-rt1052#348502

PCW wrote:

Here is 5I25/6I25 firmware for a 7I76U with the PKTUART

 

File Attachment:

File Name: 5i25_7i76x1pktd.zip
File Size:124 KB

I can try to help more later, but note there is another user trying to get a Omron MX2
working with a Mesa card and having issues. I suspect I may have to acquire a MX2
to try and get this going.

The 7I76U manual has the RS-485 wiring information (and you must use RS-485 mode with the 7I76U
so you lose on estep/dir output)

 

Sorry that was the wrong firmware for a 5I25/6I25  --> 7I76U using RS-485 mode
The correct firmware is this:


 


 

7I92 and 7I92T firmware for 7I76U with PKTUART/RS-485:

   

Ok I reinstall the debian system iso file and it still will not let me past the login screen I tried the blank password name and password but still it will not let me past the login screen with or with out the login.

now at a stand still.?

Ken

BigDo wrote:

Negative F-WORD at Line near 101
Does anyone have any ideas?
 

This is conflict with lathemacro.