Black boxes

Wow, my favorite topic comes up just as I was leaving for Cabin Fever
and I get home to a couple hundred posts to read.

My very first experiement with CNC was to buy Indexer.lpt nearly 10
years ago. Last summer when I got hot to rewite my "CNH" program, I
called Art and talked a while about using his new version. The security
dongle was a total turnoff- Its an emotional topic to me, I just wont
deal with the damn things. If it was the only program in the world and I
had no other choice, then maybe, but Ive got a lot of dongle-free
choices.

Indexer has 2 other big problems- cost and control.

Im in this as a hobby, and maybe Id like to sell my program someday, for
hobby prices. If I have to start with a $350 program there is little
room for me to make any money. I dont begrudge Art making money, I hope
he does well. Its just to expensive to be part of my program. His
competition is Master5 and things like CNCpro that are in the $100-200
range.

Indexer also has the bad 'feature' of taking over the machine when you
set it in motion- You cannot abort a command, and you cannot ask it for
a progress report to update a screen. I dont like that- its also the
reason I stopped working on my original program, which used a simple
.dll to generate the steps but had the same problem.

Windows is a fine GUI- Visual Basic can do some great GUI stuff with
great simplicity. In just a couple hours you can hack out a whole new
interface to a controller. If I could send a simple serial stream to a
black box to handle the real time stuff, then I can make a lot of very
interesting human interfaces.

I tried SimpleStep- its a $350 board, serial port interface and 3 motort
drivers. Problems are its 3 independent controllers so you have to do
strange math and hope timing causes each axis to do its thing at the
same time. And it kept haning up the serial comm- that may have been a
VB problem, but I gave up after a few weeks (Anyone want to buy a
SimpleStep board please let me know) I also dont like tieing the control
logic to the power driver- I want to use Gecko drives for either step
motors or servo with the same signal box. I dont want to fry one motor
driver and take out 2 other drivers and my signal box.

I want to do more than just 'move a few buttons around the screen' My
interest is in the home shop space, and I favor a totally different
approach to part making- I used to call this 'conversation programming'
but I have realized that is often used in a different light- programs
that help you genereate Gcode that then gets run. In my scheme there is
no gcode- none at all. The operator draws a part on the screen,
selecting from objects like lines, circle, bolt patterns, etc, then just
pushes the GO button. For the home shop guy making models from plans in
a magazine, or for the small shop owner doing the kind of 'can you make
me one like this' business this is a very powerfull approach.

See http://plsntcov.8m.com for my CNH program or look at an Acurite Mill
Power control

The marriss black box, with its simple 2D interface is exactly my wish.
I hope it will have an abort command, and an inquire command that can
run while its in motion.

As to Flashcut, I dont want to steal anyting from them- If they want to
bundle their hardware and software, fine, thats their call. But if they
would open the interface then I could write my program and maybe sell a
few copies to guys with the right hardware that wanted to try a
different interface for some work. It like buying a radio that was fixed
to only one station. Sometimes Id like to listen to a different drummer.

And thats my final point- I dont think any one software package is the
'RIGHT' one- for some jobs Id like to use Gcode, but for others its much
faster to use a differnt interface. I have a lot of software on my PC,
why should I be stuck with one CNC interface.

ron ginger