Re: 5-axis machine controller

[Jon Elson <jmelson-at-artsci.wustl.edu>]

JohnDRoc-at-aol.com wrote:

> I think you need to preface your question with your definition of production.  I believe I was the first non-NIST person to try a conversion on an industrial-strength machine.  The machine was in a tool-making shop with 9 or 10 toolmakers (I use that term loosely).  It you do the conversion yourself and run it yourself, it will do fine.  There wasn't a knothead in the shop who could have run it though, their answer to uh-oh's is to shut the machine off and turn it back on and Linux doesn't tolerate that for very long.  Likewise, what little they knew about computers was related to microsnot and windoze, so they were totally lost when I tried to show them how to create, save and open a g-code file.  I'm not saying EMC is bad, (after alot of trial, error and help from JonE et al) I had that old dinasaur humpin' to the tune of 400+ ipm.  However, I didn't trust anyone with it and, to the dismay of the shop owner, I aborted my efforts with an "ummm, I dunno, I can't make it work!
> ."!
>   Although, if it was my machine
> , I would hook it back up in a heartbeat.  Back to the original question - what do you consider production?

Well, I don't do production, as in 8 hours of machining, 5 days a week (or more).
But, it is my only machine other than a (right now) manual lathe.  I have no
other mill, or drill press, or anything like that.

I would think that a few simple procedures for entering tool programs
would be enough to make the machinists/whatever productive.
There actually is an editor inside EMC, and you could write
programs with it.  A computer programmer would want something
better, of course, but a beginner would probably do better with
something simple.  And, you edit right in the EMC's buffer, so
you can test the program with just a couple keystrokes.

Jon