PLASMAC GUI vs CommandCNC?

Thanks for that John,

I never planed to reuse the CandCNC hardware, I have read Rods post and took his advice and brought a 7I76E and a THCAD10,

I plan on reusing the DC servos so I have brought new Gecko 320x drives.

Thanks Tom,

I appreciate your insight, I will set up my machine in a couple of weeks when my parts arrive and I will report how I go.

thefabricator03 wrote:

Thanks for that John,

I never planed to reuse the CandCNC hardware, I have read Rods post and took his advice and brought a 7I76E and a THCAD10,

I plan on reusing the DC servos so I have brought new Gecko 320x drives.

Excellent decision so if you follow in John and my footstesps, in about 3 years you'll have a working system. Except I think Phill has added a very long ladder in this game of plasma, snakes and ladders!

Rod,

I know you are joking but that sums up my experience with CandCNC, I would not recommend them for anyone outside of the united states who plans to build a machine that will be used for production everyday.

'03

Well it sounds like you are nearly ready to go! The Plasmac branch is so simple to use that you can have it up and running before you even get your hardware set. Rod is putting together a good how to thread for this. The post processor required for SheetCam is much simpler than the one that came with your system. My PP is more complex than needed because I use multiple tools on each part many times. You can also easily write Gcode by hand because you don't need conditionals or macros to make the hardware work right. So go get an old Dell PC and install your distro of choice. I like Linux Mint Debian Edition - 3 which is very user friendly while being close to the Debian Distro so you can get the pre-compiled RT kernel. If you get a Dell you will need to get a Realtek NIC card to communication with your 7i76E, the native Broadcom NIC isn't reliable for RT work and I had nothing but trouble with old Intel NIC cards.

Let's just say I started down the LinuxCNC path after observing the online presents of your present systems builder. I figured that the LinuxCNC/Mesa combination will ultimately be the not so giant killer.

John