Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Help in selecting software please.

David A. Frantz wrote:

>Hi Mike;
>
>The first thing that comes to mind is why do you believe that you only
>need one piece of software? The reality is there are many options
>some of which are free. Some run under DOS, some Windows and others
>under Linux. There are probally others running under somethng else I
>don't know about.
>
>The PC specs you gave will have a tendency to limit what you will be
>able to run some. To that end I'd suggest a rather massive upgrade to
>your PC. The upgrade may or may not be required for the choosen CNC
>software but it will be very help full with CAD/CAM software and other
>design tasks. Since your interest are engineering this seems to be to
>be a credible investment. Even at that expect low end CNC
>performance from that PC.
>
>I normally would reccomend Linux and EMC as the better software
>combo. I do suspect that on your PC that would be very limited in
>performance and would require a very old version of Linux/EMC.
>
>

Actually, my main CNC machine uses a P100 with 32 MB memory, and
I have run my development machine on a P133 with 32 MB also. I usually
have 64 MB on it, as the software compiles go a lt faster. but, just to
run the machine, it doesn't need that much. This is essentially the same
as a BDI 2-22 version of EMC, although it was built from the SourceForge
repository.

I use servo systems of one sort or another on all of these, so if you
will be
making stepper pulses from software, with no external hardware, then the
maximum step rate would be limited to maybe 15000 steps/second per axis.
(That's on EMC, only, other software may do better or worse.)

Jon