Hi,

Likewise, I am interested too, as I have 2 conversion projects coming up.

At first read it looks impressive and there is some good info in the forum.

Freight cost puts me off a lot tho.

Dave

Looked at it but not used it.

I have used the Bert Eddings USBCNC kit but the one thing that puts me off these is the fact you are tied to their software and often you can't get what you need.

At least with Mach3 or Linux NC you have the ability to customise it or get someone interested.

In the early day when we were looking to adopt USBCNC we bought a system but there was a serious flaw in it that when you were down in a pocket and made a go to home command it moved all axis at the same time – BANG tool into the pocket side.

When this was pointed out to Bert all we got was it follows the Fanuc standard which is correct but then Fanuc realised they had dropped a boo-boo and brought out Standard 123A which retracted Z first. You had a choice Standard 123 or 123A

Bert was adamant he was following a standard and wouldn't budge, that's the problem when programmers are not machinists. We declined to go any further with it and the setup is still on shelf gathering dust.

Mach for all it's faults worked and Art would listen, sometimes too well and get sidetracked.I was only talking to Art on the phone last week and in the conversation he remarked that before he sold out there were about 50,000 Mach 3 licences out there.

That's a serious success story.

Bertil,

Yes it probably has been updated by now, I don't know, never looked at it again but the point I was making was Bert would not work with us.

We know what customers want and as you say they want to press buttons and just get on with it, this is where Linux lacks behind in that you do need a fair bit of computer knowledge and programming skills.

The feature you want for tool length off set is available in mach and has been for a long while, both the fixed method shown first and the plate method which is far more accurate.

Do a search on YouTube for Mach 3 tool offset.

The original question was on PlanetCNC and I can't answer any of these as I have only looked at it. Problem is I'm tied into mach 3 now so jumping ship isn't an option.

I did notice that you were asking for a program for Mill lathe and router. Mill and router are basically one and the same but can PlanetCNC do lathe threading ?

Mach can be daunting when you first look at it, it looks like the flight deck of a Boeing 747.

In the early days this was because Art kept adding things people wanted, then others were saying they wanted this on the screen, that on the screen etc And Art realised that he's never be able to keep up and please everybody, so he brought out a screen designer and left the original screens as is.

The take on this is it's easier to remove items than add them <g>

So basically you can have what you want on a screen. On the Sieg CNC which I support we have designed a screen that is ideal for a touch screen [ hate mice, no place for them in a workshop ] and has everything on one screen including setting tool length offset.

Everything needed for any application is on this first screen, the others are there if needed but I can setup any job, tools and run from this screen.

I have a similar screen on my router and engraver but the 4th axis has been removed for neatness.

This screen has the auto tool touch off, middle of the screen bottom, above the orange probe warning LED. At the moment it isn't working because we haven't got round to it but all it will take is to call that button up in the screen designer and in a box on the screen paste the code to make it work.

Yes I know this is programming but I can't program to save my life so I'll just go onto the Mach forum, search for TLO [ tool length off set ] and copy / paste the code someone far cleverer than me has already done.

That's where Mach really scores, you never have to ask the Mach guys for help, instead many of the 50,000 users will chirp up

We are no longer tied to the parallel port. For a while there have been add on cards thattake you away from the parallel port, most on USB and some on serial.

In these instances you have basically what PlanetCNC has softare, be it Planet or Mach and an add on card. In some ways this is better as you now have more choice on who's card you use.

We are testing some USB breakout boards at the moment, just simple plug and play and non configerable at all aimed at the masses.

Having said that the parallel port will be around for many, many years but you may have to look for it.

I have a commercial big CNC mill here that has an addon card internally in the computer, it requires an ISA slot and runs on DOS 5

ISA slots have been dead in mainstaem computers for many years but you can still buy motherboards with an ISA slot on them.

Mind you the parallel port on old computers does have an advantage. Every so often as stocks go down I contact bulk sellers and offer to buy older model up with a parallel port on.

After a bit of dealing when they realise I am probably the only step between getting some cash and skipping these I usually come away with a van full for peanuts and usually they still have the XP sticker on them