Russian machine tool company that uses LinuxCNC with Probe Basic

tommylight wrote:

Still the price is not astronomical.

 

No, it's not.  I'm not bashing the machine, just the fact that they're obscuring the fact that the software is LCNC.

However, two things are crippling the lathe:

Clearpath servo for the spindle with no separate encoder - there's no index output signal.  Which means you have to 'home' the C-axis and do all milling/indexing operations in one go because you can't re-home to the same position after taking it out of C-axis mode.

And the 1/2" diameter limitation is a killer.

That lathe, with a spindle encoder (or servo with index output) and 1" spindle would be pretty sweet.

And if they could beg/borrow/steal the pneumatic collet closer from the Sherline, they could have a REAL swiss that takes stock longer than a foot.

One closer on the spindle, one on the guide bushing frame, and you could feed barstock of (mostly) unlimited length without an expensive bar-feeder.

ph i thought i heard them say linuxcnc and they put it on the website also for the machine that uses it which is the mini i believe... however they didn't mention probe basic

tommylight wrote:

Yeah that is shameful, and pretty sure it is illegal. Did anyone check our license?

I believe LCNC is covered under GNU GPL-2.0 (as published on github).

The GNU page has a quite good FAQ on the license, but as with most legal issues nothing is black and white.

It's possible that because APSX (and other LCNC re-packagers) are distributing LCNC-derived software to the public, they are required to provide source code to anyone who asks - but I'm not an IP lawyer.

There are plenty of smart people around who are intimately familiar with the details of enforcing/managing a GPL license.