[Noisebridge-discuss] getting that goddamned mill to work

[Jesse Welz]

Hi,
I have never posted to this list before and a discussion of interest to me popped
so I thought I'd post one. It is really coincidental that I was just going through
the process of researching what is needed to get that mill going. I consider myself 
more of machinery hacker than computer hacker [although I am working on remedying that]
and when 

Johnathon Moore was showing me around Noisebridge for the first time I noticed 
the little mill and lathe right away as something I would love to mess around with even 
though the machines I used to run as a machinist where way bigger and scarier. Johnathon 
told me that a few people had messed with it to no avail and since moving into the new
space and seeing it there, while also now understanding the theory of DoAcracy present at 
noisebridge I was doing some research and wanted to put together a team or group or guild 
to work on things machinist related at noisebridge. 

I think that running EMC2 [the linux cnc milling software] would be totally feasable. This 


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 has been replaced by a much improved Windows version with some neat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