[Noisebridge-discuss] getting that goddamned mill to work

[Ani Niow]

In the shop we have a small blue CNC only mill that would be wonderful for
making custom circuit boards and machining small metal parts. No one has
been able to figure out how to run it however. A group of us tried getting
LinuxCNC (http://linuxcnc.org/) to connect to it but the trouble is it
doesn't support the controller used in the mill. Wish we had figured that
out earlier before spending so much time on it. The only other option was
using a DOS based program that came on floppy disks. After hours of trying
to get FreeDOS to even install, people gave up.
Been doing some research on it and it seems that the official DOS software
has been replaced by a much improved Windows version with some neat
features. It's not free though and is not cheap either at $242 (
http://www.shop.maxnc.com/product.sc?productId=23&categoryId=8).

As I see it there's three options on getting this running.


   - Fuck with the DOS version enough (which likely is hard to use with a
   horrid UI, not to mention it's fucking DOS) to get it working
   - Write a driver to support the controller inside the mill or replace the
   controller to make LinuxCNC work
   - Suck it up and buy the Windows software

Given it's a $2,500 machine that was donated to us, $242 seems like small
change. I'm sure people have religious reasons for not running Windows and
by all means don't use the mill because of it or write a Linux driver for
it. Until that happens I would absolutely love to figure out how to use a
CNC mill.

I'm willing to gather pledges and get the software, alternatively if anyone
knows where we can get it for free (maybe someone else with the same
machine) then please go for it. Do-ocracy and all.

Until then, I'm pledging $20 to The Software For the Mill Fund.


-Ani
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