CNC in the Workshop

Choose...

HOME

 
 

Mach 4

The site at:

www.machsupport.com

tells us Mach4Hobby is here, but the software plug-ins to drive hardware motion control devices only support a small range of devices at the moment. At the time of writing, licences for Mach3 are  still for sale.

If you are thinking of  buying a licence for Mach3, you might want to do that sooner rather than later.

Mach4Hobby costs $200 and you may need to buy an additional Parallel Port Legacy Plug-in if you intend using the parallel port to drive your CNC machine. The cost is $25, but the site states clearly that this is not a recommended or preferred option. In reality, Mach4 expects to talk to your CNC machine via a hardware motion controller. That is not unusual now, with separate hardware controllers being common even on small CNC machines such as 3D printers, laser cutters and wire cutters.

Check the fine print for licence details, as there are some important changes (like the software licence being locked to a single computer).

Good to see progress on Mach4, though.



LinuxCNC

LinuxCNC development continues on an (almost) daily basis, with version 2.7.13 current as of May 2018. The current recommendation is to run this on Debian Wheezy, rather than UBUNTU 14.


It’s encouraging to see the pace of development of what is now a very powerful and (I’ve said it before) an elegant piece of CNC software. This is more than a CNC package; it’s a whole programming and control environment.

I have updated the comments and instructions on upgrading/installing here.

 

CNC In the Workshop



CNC Milling in the Workshop



Topics

Computing

Mach3

LinuxCNC





Interesting links this month:

  1. •Milling a J slot

  2. Note that the sides of the slot are not radial, but parallel. tricky programming required.

  3. •One-sided boat propeller

  4. There’s a good idea here, which could be completed using software like Vectric Cut3D

  5. •3 axis mill

  6. •Look at the first photo on the site. Checkout the sturdier-than-usual construction of the gantry for the Z axis. Nice use of aluminium section and linear rails. Good use of ballscrews on the long axis (although they are uncovered).

26th May 2018

Newsletter list discontinued.

For the moment, email distribution of

our Newsletter via our list has been discontinued. That’s the result of two factors:

  1. 1.The EU GDPR

  2. 2.MailChimp locked the list and there is no prospect of further access.


Download content available

The text and photos from the series in MEW issues 203 to 218 are now available as downloads. Checkout the links in the CNC in the Workshop menu choice. (above).


Edition 2 of CNC Milling in the Workshop

The first edition has sold out, so the second edition is now available. It’s the same as the first edition, but incorporates fixes to all the known errors, bloopers and slips (as listed on the Chapter pages of this site).

Thanks to all who reported errors in that first edition.


Unrelated publications

Here’s an unashamed plug for two unrelated books, both available from The Crowood Press:

Sheet Metal Work, (link here)



and  Screwcutting (link here)