Problems with lathe

[Muzzer]

The more recent Mesa boards connect using ethernet, so there's no need for parallel ports / printer cables as such. As for the "pins/ports" business, setting up all the HAL and INI file settings can be quite a challenge in LinuxCNC, even with the config wizards. The LinuxCNC support forum is well intentioned but you are still expected to go on a bit of an adventure with no certainty where it will end up and the software is constantly evolving. If you are wary of getting back into that, you may be better sticking with something else.

My Colchester Bantam runs LinuxCNC and the gmoccapy GUI which sort of works now (although some features don't) but I have to admit when I moved on to my Tree CNC lathe, I wimped out and went with Centroid Acorn which is much more of a known, stable quantity with good support. I know others have had good experiences with UCCNC, so there are other options out there.

[terry1956]

Hi, I looked at the centroid acorn but at nearly £400 it’s a shed load of money for a board. The lathe itself only cost £80.