What are the chances of getting this setup working?

No need to apologize, war is hell.

my1987toyota wrote:

Well with my project I got interested in other things and haven't spent much time on it in a while.
Partly the placer head desperately needs updating to modern day equipment. Cable and pulley
for the Z axis is in my opinion a terrible idea but the machine was designed in 1993. We have a few
other PnP machines where I work so this one was more or less an experiment. Plus work just
doesn't seem to ease up.
 

I tend to post and then forget about LinuxCNC for a few weeks lol, forgot to check on this. I just converted the machine I intended to be to a laser cutter.....since I needed one and figured I could actually get that going. I had a belted see-saw Z, which I just stripped to mount the laser to the carriage.  I did redesign it to be a rack and pinion see-saw so that way I could easily swap out the PnP nozzles for and the laser and have a compatible Z. I haven't machined it yet though

It'd be nice if there was a proven simplified PnP setup for LinuxCNC. I'd be alot more inclined to finish the mechanical stuff if I knew software wasn't going to be a long drawn out slug fest. Hopefully somebody beats me to it, if not maybe I'll get there one day lol.

I do find flexGUI to be a pretty easy (ish) way to get a purpose built UI going. I was able to convert the one I was making for my mill into a laser UI fairly simple. I'd definately use that to tackle the PnP thing if I were at it right now.