Smooth Steppers are finally available in UK !

[ptjw7uk]

Thank you Lee for making a very pertinate point.
I for one only look on here for information and as such is not interested in point scoring if I was i would only have to look in any newspaper!
Lets keep the machining information flowing after all thats what the forum is for!
peter

[boldford]

And after reading this whole thread I'm none the wiser whether to go for LinuxCNC or Mach.

[rnr107]

And after reading this whole thread I'm none the wiser whether to go for LinuxCNC or Mach.

Note that I started the thread to tell people about the availability of the Smoothstepper motor board in UK !
Nothing to do with a fight between Pro-Mach vs Pro-Linux...

But, life goes on mate !

[JAZZCNC]

And after reading this whole thread I'm none the wiser whether to go for LinuxCNC or Mach.

Tell you what then put up a thread poll asking whether Mach or Linux user and see who has the largest user base.?

CNC folks don't tend to use things that don't work has it's none productive and very frustrating. Every software has it's problems and issues or special area's where it shines but the real difference and where it counts is when you do have an issue how quick you can get info or fix for the problem.? . . . The user base will reflect this.!!

[Jonathan]

Tell you what then put up a thread poll asking whether Mach or Linux user and see who has the largest user base.?

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, just because something is more popular doesn't necessarily mean it is the best. Plus, although it is clear that Mach3 is the most popular in England, I don't think you'll find that's the case in some countries.

And after reading this whole thread I'm none the wiser whether to go for LinuxCNC or Mach.

That wasn't the purpose of this thread, but from your previous posts it seems you already use LinuxCNC, so I suggest trying both and see which you like best / which works best. I can't really add any more to the debate than I did in the first couple of posts on the topic.

[boldford]

As a newby I'm just getting to grips with this whole CNC thing.
I think readers here fall into two broad camps. There are those with an IT exposure that want to get into carving real materials and those that manipulate material manually and want to bring in the benefits of NC.

From what I've read to date and my general experience of other M$ based PC S/W I am of the perception that Mach is a slick application which works straight out of the box for most people. Understandably, Art brought success to his application by designing it to run on the World's most popular OS. Unfortunately the M$ OS being closed source means he's pretty much stuck with it, as is, warts and all. Modern PCs are so fast that they can usually mask the inherent non-real time weaknesses of the OS. I'm sure SS is capable of overcoming those timing weaknesses - at the price ($$$ or £££) of throwing more processing power at the job.

On the other hand LinuxCNC sets out to be more flexible, and certainly more precise in the timing domain even with low end processors (P4 or earlier), but to me it seems to be less than friendly to the non-IT geek by failing to be as easy to set up as it could be after the great promise shown during install from an ISO CD. For LinuxCNC to become more popular I would appeal to those within the LinuxCNC fraternity to consider my comments if they intend to port it to 12.04LTS along with a substantial re-write of the manual.

That's just my two-penny-worth; but what do I know?

[JAZZCNC]

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, just because something is more popular doesn't necessarily mean it is the best. Plus, although it is clear that Mach3 is the most popular in England, I don't think you'll find that's the case in some countries.

Yes and I don't disagree in some respects and certainly wasn't saying Mach3 was better than linux cnc.!! Each has it's own set of skills and weakness's.!!. . BUT we do live in UK and tend to work within the English speaking domains like Cnczone etc so this does become important.! Very important to some people who haven't got IT skills and don't want to learn Geek.!!
They need good sources of information and help from friendly more experienced users, I know the result of such a poll. . . But it will show to others just how wide the user base for each software really is.!! . . . This can then be used has a guide to help them decide if this holds any value to them.?