CNC Colchester chipmaster

**Lee Roberts** · 13-07-2016

Originally Posted by Ross77

Really tempted with EMC2, mesa boards and path pilot. I was looking at Tormach in the first place so now that they have moved to Linux and pathpilot in beta for non TM machines then that will be good enough for me.

Just put off by learning Linux.

Which Mesa cards do you use?

You won't need to learn Linux, you'll end up with a desktop and mouse like a windows machine, you'll only need to go "deep" if you want to.

If you can run win and mach you can run LinuxCNC, allot of people get spooked by the word Linux :).

.Me

**Ross77** · 13-07-2016

Thanks Lee.
Ive been on the linuxcnc page and the cnczone tormach section and it seems you have to tinker with the settings quite a bit for non tormach machines.

If I could pick up a disc and cheap mesa card in the Uk then Id probably have a crack at it.

**Clive S** · 13-07-2016

Originally Posted by Lee Roberts

You won't need to learn Linux, you'll end up with a desktop and mouse like a windows machine, you'll only need to go "deep" if you want to.

If you can run win and mach you can run LinuxCNC, allot of people get spooked by the word Linux :).

.Me

Lee it is a leaning curve but so is a cad or cam program. Linuxcnc is very easy to install from the live CD. and there is a wizard for setting up the drives and motors but after that you have to edit the ini and hal files to tweak it. One problem is homing with a slaved axis but it has been addressed but still not easy to do. (For me anyway)