I've been doing some reading about the electronics side of the project recently hence the lack of updates. I'm currently favouring a Mach based set up using an Ethernet SmoothStepper and the PMDX-126 board. A fairly expensive set up admittedly but one that I hope will be fairly trouble free. I admit I'm tempted to try out LinuxCNC first as I have a pile of old computers hanging around and a fair bit of experience with Linux (I run half a dozen Linux servers) but as an old friend once said to me "Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing" and I've found that to almost always be true.

My rails finally arrived from South Korea (48 hours to get from South Korea to Cardiff, 3 weeks nearly to get from Cardiff to Gloucester!). I got caught for import duty but not a lot so can't really grumble and they were still much cheaper than locally sourced stuff. I've given them a little slide about and everything seems fine. If I press down on the block it slides more easily, I'm guessing this is pre-loading? Is there anything in particular I should look for to check if they are ok?

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