[Noisebridge-discuss] getting that goddamned mill to work

[Tom Longson (nym)]

Here's another $20 + 2, only 10 more people donating $20 will get this thing
working. Once we have something working, someone can reverse engineer the
fucker I imagine, making a Linux driver more likely.
Cheers,
Tom Longson (nym)




On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Ani Niow <v at oneletterwonder.com> wrote:

> 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 has been replaced by a much improved Windows version with some neat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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>
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