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    Not sure if I'm posting this in the right place but I cant get past the joint following error to tune my -10/10 volt servos. I've reloaded everything several times with the same result... When I enable the drives the servos start drifting for about .001/.002 and then the following error. I am THE most computer illiterate person on earth and have no idea how to fix this thing. I've been trying for the last couple of months to get it going but can't get past this. With the help from this forum I've been able to get the network, mesa flash, mesa ct and card wiring complete but am stuck on this one.  

Thank you for that.

Update: I have the pc at this moment at home, so i can do some tests while doing my work.
When i start latency-histogram and run it for some time (e.g. 15 min) with 3x glxgears the base thread looks good. Depending on the cpu bios settings i have stable max us of 20.000, but i found out that when i addionally start a youtube video (720p), the latency goes up, pretty quickly, almost directly after starting the video and then the latency jumps to 45000 then 60.000 and who knows how high it goes but then of course it doesnt matter anymore. 
Of course i have to connect the pc back to the machine and see if it starts without unexpected real time delay and if the machines runs smooth, because after going from wheezy to debian 12 i had the situations where there latency-test (not histogram) showed good results in for a short time but the motors didnt move as they should.

While writing this post, the latency-histogram is still runing and still at 20.0 us. Maybe i am able to get it to work, but it seems that the vga might cause the latency spike and thats why i get a unexpected real time delay on start up.

What i could do next is to buy better ram, because one stick of the ddr3 1600mhz (2x4gb) ram that i had from my last main pc is not working, so i am currently using some old 1333mhz ddr3 2x2gb rams.
Also a onboard vga might give better results, but i dont have a pc with integrated vga to test it.

Perfect! Not sure what plasma cutter you have but if it was say hypertherm, a surface mount circular connector that just pushes into the socket on the machine and you would have a nice complete self mounting package. I used the 7i76e spindle relay for torch on so there is nothing wrong with your photo diode. You just need to add a pull down resistor on the arcOK as discussed in the qtplasmac docs. 

Of course if you had a XPR hi def its Ethercat anyway!

Really think of the X,Y graphs you drew at school. You can choose any quadrant  but its  much easier playing in the positive  quandrant which places 0,0 at the bottom left and you play in the top right quandrant (Travel +X,+Y). It's easier to have home sensors near 0,0 but I do have a machine that was easier to put the y home sensor at max Y so I have a very long home_offset to move it back to the 0,0 position. I have thought of  changing the setup so I work in the bottom right quadrant so 0,0 is at top left close to the home switch. (travel would be +X, -Y) You never work in  raw coordinates  as you touch off your g54 offset so 0,0 is somewhere on your workpiece. If you touched off at bottom left of your workpiece, you would be working on the workpiece in that positive quandrant again. Sometimes you would touch off in the centre of your workpiece to bore a hole or make a motor mount, Sometimes you might also touch off at the back left against the corner of your vice jaws if you had a few parts to make. (travel +X, -Y). If I do this, I have a big magnet I stick on the jaws so I have a repeatable position.

Issue solved by using M100

I've not used it in earnest but QTplasmac installs fine with 4 axes with 2 motors on the gantry, XYYZA
I have installed it with 5 stepper drives though
Probably pair it up with Sheetcam rotary for CAM

Then the choice seems quickly made; I'll have to get my hands on an old PC and start exploring Linux, which is completely new to me. Do you have it running on an old PC mounted near the table, or is it also possible to run Linux on a NUC?

In any case, I'll dive into the various posts on this forum while continuing with the mechanical design.

I see that QTPlasm doesn't work so easily for the rotation axis—perhaps I should leave it out for the first project and later build it as a standalone machine, just like Tommy did.

Thanks for the input! It's greatly appreciated!