Man. Chris has hit a few buttons here. > From: Chris Albertson [mailto:[email protected]] > The real problem with the wider adoption of LinuxCNCis that it is there kit > of parts and does not work out of the box. After that it gets worse, the > parts are unfamiliar to most people.
The problem isn't only the kit of parts on the electronic side of things. There is no standard milling machine and each one seems to require a different solution. Stay with leadscrews. Add anti-backlash nut? Change to ball screws? So the mechanics are just one side of adding CNC and the costs are not low. Stepper motors? Servo Motors? Closed loop? Open Loop? A 2A size 17 stepper driver for 24V on a 3D printer is vastly different from a 70V 8A size 34 stepper driver in price and power supply requirements. > > What is needed before it will see wide use is a re-architecture. Move the > real-time components to open-source hardware and then remove the need for > real-time Linux and make the non-real-time parts cross platform > Linux/Windows/Mac. 3D printers are not unlike milling machines. Note how > they work, you can use any computer you own and all the real-time stuff is > on a circuit card that is not inside your computer. These printers run > g-code and move MUCH faster than mills What was available when LinuxCNC was first developed and what is available now is so dramatically different that Chris makes a good argument for this. Way back I wrote some software for a huge Gantry Based Laser Cutter for fabric. Run with Servos I wrote the demo software in 8085 assembler on a CP/M-80 machine. I was called in because the programmer was away for two weeks and they had an important demo coming up. So we cut some circles and other polygons. Now, although 8 bit Atmel micro-processors (Arduino) are doing much the same thing the number of 32 bit processors out there is nothing short of amazing. The Beagle with the dual PRU and fully open source but terrible graphical output. The Pi with great graphics but requires 4 processors to do what the Beagle does with one and the dual PRUs. And there are more. From what I understand, the MESA hardware essentially already offloads most of the important real time stuff into the FPGAs. Remember, you can, in addition to quadrature counters, PSI ports etc, fabricate an entire micro-processor inside an FPGA. > > After you do this the system is "plug and play" and runs on a computer the > user already has. > > Years ago the few Linux users were wondering how Linux could be more widely > used. The answer was to hide the fact that it was Linux. That is what > Google did with Android. Now Android (Linux) is the most used OS in the > world having more than twice as many users as Microsoft Windows. > Not really a fair comparison. Most of the Android OS usage is in telephones and a lesser number in tablets or televisions so although there may be more Linux run systems (especially when you add in routers) the actual laptop/PC workstation world is still mostly Windows with Apple (now also with a Linux underbody IIRC) coming in second. > So, to make LinuxCNC nearly universal, hide it inside a product that is > slick and easy to install and use. No one should have to look at HAL files > or know it runs on Linux. They can learn, but if learning is required it > will always remain a niche product. > I also don't think it's correct to compare a 3D printer with a Mill. There's so much more to using a mill than there is to threading filament and downloading a file from a web site to create a cute little figurine. And if you take a step back and look at the fundamentals, LinuxCNC is an Operating System. And the better question to answer first is how does an OS fit into a CNC control system. What's needed and what isn't? Can the Free RTOS running on a 32 bit processor do exactly the same thing? In that sense Chris is dead on. A modern 32 bit processor with appropriate hardware might well cover 75% of all CNC applications. But the ones with Resolvers or high res encoders etc. will still require that custom hardware provided by suppliers like Jon Elson or Peter Wallace. I'm not going to turn this into a rant about Linux command lines but when you think about it much of working with LinuxCNC is essentially still 'command line' oriented. It's just typing lots of G-Code over and over. Other than the 5 button array on the Arduino 3D printer controller how much G-Code do you need to enter to 3D print something? None. My Ardunio front panel doesn’t even let me do that nor does Octoprint (at least not very easily) and I'm running that on a Pi2. Change over to MACH3 and there are a very large number of 'Wizards'. Want to surface something to a given depth. Fill in the blanks, it creates the G-Code, you load it and run it. Yes, an expert LinuxCNC user can whip up a G-Code program just as fast. But that's not the point. With little experience, or only the occasional use, the MACH3 system is easier. And when I talk to people who have milling machines and ask why they haven't added CNC the answer tends to be they just can't see the use. But power feed is nice. John Dammeyer > On Fri, Sep 4, 2020 at 6:28 AM Greg Bernard <[email protected]> wrote: > > > That's one reason I suggested working on making LinuxCNC more appealing to > > the Maker community. Younger folks would be likely to take up the challenge > > of making such things happen. > > > > On Fri, Sep 4, 2020, 2:59 AM andy pugh <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > On Fri, 4 Sep 2020 at 07:04, TJoseph Powderly <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > If You are thinking of conversational, you might look at Fanuc Macro B > > > > for ideas. Its a tool they had for conversational programming. Pretty > > > > old school appearance but the idea of a macro dialog interpreter > > > > inside the control was very leading edge in the 80's > > > > > > We have a selection of such things, including ngcgui and nativecam > > > (and my own lathe macros). But they aren't _particularly_ graphically > > > slick. > > > They might actually be just as functional, but they aren't shiny stuff > > > for the tablet users. > > > > > > -- > > > atp > > > "A motorcycle is a bicycle with a pandemonium attachment and is > > > designed for the especial use of mechanical geniuses, daredevils and > > > lunatics." > > > � George Fitch, Atlanta Constitution Newspaper, 1912 > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Emc-users mailing list > > > [email protected] > > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Emc-users mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > > > > > -- > > Chris Albertson > Redondo Beach, California > > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
