Commercial vs. hobby controls was Re: Bridgeport CNC retrofit rec...

Kim,

Many great points. BUT...

How many of them stand up without YOU in the equation???

In other words, how many people do you think could do the pascal
programming you have done to make your version of TCNC? And of those
who CAN program pascal, how many would have the time and inclination
to help someone who knows machining, but NOT programming? (After all,
you've just told us about two people who CAN'T get to where you are,
or they wouldn't be asking you to set up their CNC...

What this all leads to is that for most people, Doug is correct. An
older commercial control (as he says, not necessarily 15 years old,
when you have 15K bux to spend) will run circles-(and you know why
I'm making that pun if you're familiar with TCNC-it currently has
problems with feedrates in circles, even in the V4 beta)- around a
STANDARD TCNC install...

Once your mods make it into the TCNC pkg (if they ever do), THEN the
argument(s) you've just laid out make sense for the "typical" guy...

Having said all this, I do agree with some of your points. Ray Henry,
I understand, taught himself programming so that he could do the same
kinds of things with EMC that you have done with TCNC. And Art
Fenerty is learning a LOT about what needs to be in a commercial
level CNC control as he writes Mach2- he came from the programming
side. So if the right person meets the right challenge...

And I also agree that the timeframe for Doug's truth is diminishing.
Hobby controls are getting a lot better, very quickly. Especially
Mach2, IMO. TCNC, without your mods, IMO still has a long way to go.

Right now, a guy who wants to machine, with 15k bux in hand, is
better off with an older control he can use immediately. Unless YOU
are going to update TCNC for his machine and HIS needs...

Ballendo

P.S. I also agree with your statements about the value of
having "done it" yourself, so you can fix it...

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, Kim Lux <lux@d...> wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-12-16 at 09:40, doug.rasmussen@c... wrote:
>
> >
> > Hi Kim,
> >
> > First off, I didn't mean to suggest buying a machine that old, I
was
> > only making the statement that I feel the commercial controls of
> > that age generally have more features than the current hobby PC
> > based
> > types.<snip>