[Noisebridge-discuss] getting that goddamned mill to work

[Martin Bogomolni]

Look at EMC (runs on ubuntu, well .. it is a -variant- of ubuntu).  I
believe it has a profile that will drive the mill

-Martin

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Jonathan Foote <jtfoote at ieee.org> wrote:
> Waitaminit, I thought we was leet hakerz! Looking at the linuxcnc
> setup, it's pretty straightforward to interface with a parallel port
> if we can find the stepper and encoder signals.
>
> http://www.distinctperspectives.com/emc2installsetup/page4.html
>
> I've done that before on another project and it went pretty well:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/headrotor/3549404637/in/photostream/
>
> If I have permission to poke at the mill controller boards I can take
> a look tonight.
>
> Someone want to find a PC with a serial port and install the linuxcnc
> ubuntu image?
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 2:39 PM, Tom Longson (nym) <tomlong at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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 has been replaced by a much improved Windows version with some neat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
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>>
>>
>>
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