DDSCV1.1 3 and 4 axis offline motion controller

[JAZZCNC]

Things could be very different in two years.
Every chance the Euro could very well implode by then, along with China's artificially deflated economy.

Things could be very different in two weeks time if that lunatic Trump wins in few hours time.!!!

[Boyan Silyavski]

Things could be very different in two weeks time if that lunatic Trump wins in few hours time.!!!

Hopefullynot,comeonLee,fixthatquickreplyplease

[magicniner]

Things could be very different in two weeks time if that lunatic Trump wins in few hours time.!!!

You forgot to cross your fingers while you typed that! :-(

[Ger21]

Hopefully, everything Trump said he wanted to do were lies, like everything else he said.

[Neale]

Please don't get too distracted by the nonsense that's just happened in the US, guys! I, for one, have been following this discussion with great interest, although I doubt that I shall be throwing out my Mach3/CSMIO setup any time soon. However, I recognise that that solution isn't the optimum as I have a slaved X axis machine and I still need to sort out homing problems with the IP/M because the IP/S, which does it properly, is too expensive. Maybe in future the answer will be one of these dedicated controllers.

There are definitely two classes of users here. One is the home/hobby user, like me. I'm fortunate in having a background in both electronics and computing, so wiring up and configuring these things, assuming that they have the basic functionality needed, isn't a big deal, and I can afford time more than money to get it all sorted. For me, the other type of user is the professional but small-scale user. Not the big organisations with the manpower and resources to sort problems, but the one-man kind of business. A friend of mine who runs a small business making signs and notice boards wanted to bring the engraving in house instead of subcontracting it to a local company (who weren't very good anyway). He bought a Chinese 600x900 router, although a rather better and more expensive version than some of the cheap ones around. He needs to be doing money-earning work, not fiddling about building a machine. Setting up the hardware was pretty easy, no problems there. However, the machine came with Mach3 (and he did buy a "proper" licence) plus a USB motion controller. Fortunately, I was able to help him get going. The half-day or so it took me would probably have taken him a week, assuming that he succeeded at all. He could have done with an install-and-forget solution, even at a slightly higher price. For the home user, once the dedicated box becomes cheaper than buying all the separate bits and wiring them together, the choice will be equally obvious. I, for one, am looking to you experts to guide me as to what's becoming available

Interesting that there seems to be such a problem with lathe CNC, particularly threading. At first sight it doesn't sound like that big a problem but maybe it is - and the lathe CNC market is too small compared with 3/4-axis machines to be worth worrying about?

[John S]

That is the problem, lathe is a very small market compared to routers and mills.

However it's a problem that I can't understand in some ways as we could thread with the Conect / Boxford / Denford machines on DOS and now we have far more powerful external motion controllers and computers but no one seems to be able to get it right out of the box ??

[m_c]

As John says, lathe is only a small part of the market. I can't remember if it was Art or Brian, but I'm sure their upper estimate was 10% of Mach users used turn, but more likely near 5%. And Mach is probably the most popular option for Turn applications.
.
I'm not sure why threading is so hard. I suspect the problem is how more modern controllers have been programmed to handle general motion, that when they get around to adding threading, it involves major changes, so it gets glued on as an after thought.
I'd guess the old DOS systems were a pretty basic system. Move x steps each time there's a pulse from the multislot sensor, adjust timing slightly if too fast/slow, and you have a thread. The benefit that style of controller had, was the hardware and software was the responsibility of one entity, and you didn't have to program in lots of different options, along with all the other usually pointless functionality that users think they must have.

[Clive S]

Dare I say this there is always linuxcnc https://forum.linuxcnc.org/show-your...1350-rpm-m14x2

[magicniner]

Dare I say this there is always linuxcnc https://forum.linuxcnc.org/show-your...1350-rpm-m14x2

Well it's got to be better than paying $200 for a license based on advertised functionality only to find they might make it work this year, next year, sometime, never.

If a few more of the developers of linuxcnc were experienced engineers and could see past their own assumed level of knowledge it would be the only option at this point in time ;-)

- Nick

[John S]

And a GUI that doesn't look like Etch-a-Sketch on acid