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I will add one caution about putting a big capacitor on the output of a switching power supply - this may cause the supply to become unstable (depends on the supply) and may cause an overcurrent trip at startup (depending on the supply).  Most power supplies themselves have to solve this problem in their input stages, using current limiting devices.
 

Exactly! The PC (raspberry Pi or similar), power supplies and stepper (or servo drivers) can be basically the same. What I think is that the mesa card is not worth it, when you stay with open loop stepper motors and the mechanical system is not made for high speeds. But once you start using the I/O and Encoder inputs it is a real help to have a system that is easy to use, supported and works (happy customer of Mesa Plug n go kit).
For the picoCNC I paid roughly (guessing) 130-140€. Some things come with minimum quantities, others are discounted. It ends up at approx. 30€ a piece +-. I would have just bought the successor of it for 50$, but shipping would have doubled the price. To me it was more about the assembly challenge than the actual need for it. But there are "ready to go" options. 

 


One aspect is that a 10 mm carbide endmill will cost roughly the same. 



 

So for metal working the tooling and material quickly gets in regions where a Mesa card is really my least problem and I bought a 2nd Mesa card after the first one.

#no advertisement just random pictures. 
 

The OP implied he already had a PC to use, which you'd need for GRBL anyway (unless you added an LCD, buttons, and an sdcard), so adding a parallel breakout board is about $10, compared to the $4 for the pico and whatever the picocnc costs (assuming you can buy it, I couldn't find one for sale, but web site says "retired", but historically $29 assembled). You need the same stepper drivers either way.

A Mesa board is way more expensive, yes, but you get a lot more for your money.

there is an example:

./bin/rio-flow riocore/configs/TangNano9K/config.json

I'm using a Tang Nano 9k FPGA. How do I configure it to output a PWM signal to the spindle?

I am not sure if Linux CNC is really cheaper than GRBL. 
 

www.grbl.org/single-post/a-peek-at-the-picocnc This is an example based on the Raspberry Pi Pico, all documented and possible to recreate "in the flesh". I bought the Pico boards for like 3€ a piece. The base board was more expensive, but not too crazy. 

• slow simple 3 axis machine without linear scales or rotary encoders probably works just fine with the GRBL
  • When I think of adding things "slaved axis", "linear scales", "automatic tool changer" I would go for LinuxCNC 
     

Hi all! Long time no speak.   Finally, I was able to finish this transition. There is the PR: github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/pull/4293 Any feedback is welcome!

I don't know if anybody can help but working with Brad Collette a Freecad Developer who has a PR pending for MTconnect. His PR includes a machine simulation which looks much nicer if the machine visulisation is based on a real machine. The model he has is not open source.

I was hoping somebody would be willing to share their model (only looking for basic 3 axis machine)

You can learn more about his MTconnect project here where I interviewed him about it.
youtube.com/live/b_S-p2nylr8

Thanks guys, Please let me know here if  you can help and are willing to contribute a model that will end up being part of LinuxCNC core code.

Not sponsered at all, just Meanwell make well priced power supplies that are available globally.

MAke sure you have the Realtek R8168-dkms or R8125-dkms driver installed for your realtek card. It may fix it.

Those should be fine at 48V, i know mine were fine when testing them, but being used at 36V.
The thing is, the cheap drives i mentioned some posts back have 9-42V written on them, but powering them with 36V will cause them to fail, fairly quickly, as the 42V written on them is the "absolute maximum rating" or the point where they die. Typical or preferred working power supply is written as 24V on the chip datasheet. I have them running at 27V for several years.
Yours are a different type, with output mosfets that are usually rated for 100V absolute maximum.
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Sorry for this topic becoming to convoluted, so try not to overthink stuff, get some parts, wire, test, make chips, after a while you get a very good idea of what is perfectly fine and what you could do with upgrading.

The supply seems to have protections in place already for this so I'm probably not going to bother but thanks for the heads up

I would expect that adjustable PSU to work just fine for this application. Like I said, I would not bother adding a capacitor. But if you do, don't use the 35V capacitors I suggested earlier, for use on a 48V PSU.

Try to find an Intel network card, look for used 100Mbps ones, all new 1Gbps ones seen to be RealTek.
If the PC has a PCI slot, even real old 10Mbps Intel ones should work.

I think I have a pretty good idea of what I need, but I might switch the LRS to a 48V 10A supply just so that I have room to grow in the future if I want to.

Yes, this is a fact, and the drives you chose should be fine on 48V. 

The drives have a 50V max but if you don't think it'll cause an issue I'll go for it and see.