Re: Survey Please read (tome)

Hans,

Ok, you are into Windows. That's fine. You use CNCPro. I have heard a
lot of good things about it. You do work on a Maxnc mill running stepper
motors making circuit boards. Your system works well for you.

CNCPro wouldn't work well for me. I need cutter radius compensation for
some jobs. I want to be able to modify the GUI (yes it has a gui) to suit
my needs. I like to edit some programs at the control - while the machine
is cutting parts.

I have a couple of milling machines running EMC. The computers that
control these milling machines are dedicated to just running parts. No
more, no less. To me, these controllers are just as good as the Fanuc or
Fadal pendants on the CNCs at work (actually EMC is better in a lot of
ways). I don't do CAD/CAM work on them. I do that on the windoze machine
that is in another room, with Vector CAD/CAM on it and then send files over
the network to the machines. So, the Linux/Windows debate is of no
importance to me. I use both. It just happens that the machine controller
that I like best works on Linux- it used to work on Windows NT (NIST
stopped developement on that platform for some reason).

EMC supports steppers and servos. You can run a Hexapod with the 6 axis
version of it. It is open source- so there are some of us who are adding
things to it, which you can find at: www.linuxcnc.org. Ray Henry added a
backplotter to it.

It's an open ended system that is free- yes some people complain about the
time needed for the Linux install, but EMC is free and it is an industrial
grade control program. That's hard to beat.


Sorry for the rant, but I had to do it!

Dan