Tormach's suggestions list ??

Does anyone know IF Tormach has a list of suggestions that users have written in about wanting ??

I hate to keep beating on a dead horse if Tormach does not want to add certain features to the Mix.

They don't seem to be to talkative these days. I have not had responces to questioned I asked on their website for many many months now.

SO how do you guys feel about developing features outside of what Tormach provides and publishing those features coded for other users to adapt to their machines. It does make it NICE to have features that you are used to having with Commercial machines. Having things like Rigid PECK tapping can be a blessing to low powered spindles. It only took 12 lines of code to make it work properly . Just had to add the "Q" parameter to the G84 and do a remap on it.

Remapping is ALSO very handy as you can create codes that you are used to having such as G68/G69 and G15/G16 ALSO you can add G31 to PathPilot so you can run older code that ran the G31 for probing. Also youo can create and run Wizards (Gcode Generators as the old EMC crowd knew them as) That allows one to create Conversatonal features that PathPilot does not have and most likely will never have beyond what they want to support. I developed a simple Wizard Menu that runs out of the ADMIN function. Just drop your wizard code into the Gcode/Wizards folder and then you can run it from the Admin Menu. The real beauty of that is being able to create an share Conversational features with other DIYers

I know there is getting to be a LARGE group of PathPilot users that are not running on Tormach hardware and when you start adding features to PathPilot it makes it harder to UPDATE. And sometimes Tormach can break your feature with something they changed. An example would be with the way we do ATC's. We use the B and C axis to run the ATC. THE atc is very simple that way. BUt one update I noticed that PathPilot would no longer run teh B and C axis. I found the problem and it was Tormach working to block being able to add the 5th >> 9th axis into PathPilot. I simply fixed it back to how it was (;-)

I also see code that may suggest that PathPilot may one day be a Subscription based controller. You may have to PAY to Play in the Tormach kingdom. And if done properly I would not have a real problem with that or a permanant site license BUT i don't think they can with teh GPL license that LInuxCNC uses

So what are your thoughts on the matter ??? Is it time to make DIY PathPilot a thing with DIYers adding teh support. That approach has worked well for decades now with LinuxCNC and Mach3/4 and UCCNC ??? MAYBE give it a new name if Tormach does not want to be a part of it ??


(;-) TP

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Originally Posted by vmax549

I know there is getting to be a LARGE group of PathPilot users that are not running on Tormach hardware and when you start adding features to PathPilot it makes it harder to UPDATE. And sometimes Tormach can break your feature with something they changed.


(;-) TP

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Tormach set up pathpilot and update it for the use of their machines , I don't think tormach has any interest or obligation to be wasting costly time supporting software that isn't being run on their machines . There simply isn't anything in it for them .
Good luck even for a tormach owner to have them support a mod . I had a quick question about adding a 4th axis to my 440 when they didn't have that option available , their answer was any mods will void warranty . They didn't answer a simple question

I honestly think it would be wiser for a community of non tormach users to use linuxcnc and modify it to suit their needs . The right ideas , interface , and mods could be welcome in the linuxcnc community . I've got machines running on axis and I haven't used qtdragon yet but but it looks to be better setup than pathpilot

Vmax isn't necessarily talking about PP on non-Tormach machines, his mods would apply to anyone using PathPilot. Lots of participants on this subsection have Tormach machines. I don't, and as such I have 0 expectation that Tormach would support me. OTOH they now have their own forum where several employees particiapte.

My personal opnion, based on a bit of reading and mod-ing of the provided source code, is that at minimum everything Python is GPL or similar. As such I would love for Vmax to post his code somewhere so that we can all benefit.

I interpret the addition of the subscrop[tion-looking code ( a bunch of releases ago) as keeping the control running only if a leased machine's payments are current. This is not the same as subscription-based. Not sure if something else was added in more recent releases. There is also code that is more restritive with operation of interlocks and saftey features for use in EU as their rules are stricter and more specific. I think some of this is invoked by adding a jumper to the console interface.

As for using linuxcnc instead, I use PathPilot for the simple reason that I don't have to deal with the vaguaries of installing etc. I tried several of the 'quick and easy' installs from their forum a few years ago, and came up empty after days of trying (and I am not a Unix/Linux newbie by any definition). PathPilot is well packaged for straight forward install from their $28.95 usb stick.

Lastly, on the Tormach forum they indicate that V3 is being worked on, which to me means more releases for V2 are likely going to be rare. They are thankfully moving away from Glade. And likely a lot of code will get refactored as it has become disjointed due to all the additions over the years.

gerrit

I don't disagree that we could all benefit from mods or improvements with pathpilot . I suggested linuxcnc for non tormach users or heavy modding guys because it would be better supported in the linux community .

Vmax made a point to say he gets no more responses from tormach , updates mess with mods on non tormach machines , etc . I don't mean any offence in what I said or am saying now , but I honestly don't blame tormach for not supporting unpaid customers , and anyone who runs a business knows the cost of dealing with tire kickers who have no intention of buying .

If non tormach users can make pathpilot work on their machines then that is great . I have pathpilot running on a novakon so I can have both tormach and non running on the same software . I would never consider contacting tormach with questions for controlling my torus . Unlike mach and the rest tormach isn't making money off the software , it's only on the machines .

I'd be interested to see what the next vesion brings but I'm not holding my breath , I don't bother with the updates and am still running 2.14 on all mine

That’s the exact right attitude IMO.
Same hobby folks that cut throat penny pinch when buying yet want full recompense when selling. Or post laments “why no full featured, high quality 10”x lathes for sale?” Because they don’t understand business or economics. LOL.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Now does Tormach benifit from DIYers running PathPilot on NON Tormach machines ?? OF COURSE they do . The large the group of users the larger band of DIY supporters. Also if were to ask me today what machine they should get. IF it is not to be used as the sole supprt for a job shop I recomend PathPilot. IF it will be used to support a job shop I would recomend Haas. You will go broke trying to support a full blown job shop with Tormach machines. Don't think so ??? Look at the most of Tormach brand ambassitors .Most of them Support themselves with Commercial CNC machines and run the Tormach's as a side gig teaching users CNC

DID Tormach chouse wisely when they adaopted LinuxCNC as the base code for PathPilot ??? They got about 4 decades of CNC developement and testing for FREE. Could they have gotten away with charging for PathPilot ? Yes they could have under the GPL but they chose not to. And they made the best decision.

IF I were a betting man I would wager that with in the next 5 years you will see HAAS offer a DIY Next Gen controller for the hobbiest and DIY market. IF users learn to run the Next Gen controller as a hobby or low cost CNC usage then the Operators can step right into the JOB shop market almost fully trained. WIN WIN and what machine do you think a smart job shop will buy for their general purpose CNC machine ???? It won't be a Mazak (;-)

Should Tormach follow suite ?? I would (;-) but I would mold PathPilot to be a little more like a Haas type control . Here I have been remapping Codes to mimick the Haas controller, using buttons instead of a mouse, etc,etc. IT does speed up produciton and $$$ earned . Also things like Rigid Peck Tapping is very usefull with the Tormach's lower powered spindles. Gummy material ? no problem, Hard material no problem. You can tap one thread at a time if needed.

Converstional Wizards are another USEFULL function for PathPilot. They have been around since the EMC days. They called them Gcode Generators. The Mach crowd calls them Wizards. I have built them in EMC2 Linuxcnc, mach3, mach4, UCCNC and now PathPilot.

(;-) TP

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Originally Posted by vmax549

. IF it is not to be used as the sole supprt for a job shop I recomend PathPilot. IF it will be used to support a job shop I would recomend Haas. You will go broke trying to support a full blown job shop with Tormach machines. Don't think so ???

(;-) TP

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Naw I don't thinks so . I profit a minimum couple hundred /hr with my five mills . If we are talking large work then of course tormach won't jive , nor will a haas which is at the bottom end of of the industry . Also haas already has hobby / educational toys available , except at top dollar .
Tormach could create a control panel and all that fancy stuff but whats the cost going to be . How much more is a guy goiing to spend on a hobby grade machine
I make parts daily on an older version , the software does what it's intended for

The first couple hours of my morning is talking and dealing with customers . At that point I am making zero , except with a certain number of them I am assured a future sale If I catered to every single request , every single mod etc then I'd have no time to be earning money . Most times that I come to an agreement they back out of the deal . There comes a point where I need to filter out dead ends . Now I'm at the point of take it or leave it . Tormach isn't going to be any different in that sense . I am sure they have their hands full supporting paid customers or leads to a new machine sale . There are a lot of paid guys who are making requests for features to which never happen or even get acknowledged

Maybe we should focus on how to best share the excellent work Vmax and others have done instead of the side topics?
If Tormach is interested they will pipe in, if not at least we still benefit. To me that is the prime reuest from Vmax's first post in this thread. It is one portion that we have control over, since we have little to no influence directly with Tormach.

In short Path Pilot interface using a linux cnc kernel changed Tormachs business and business model.
Having more control over how the software drives their machines was one of the best things Tormach ever did.
The big thing is consistent operation leaning toward industry standards.
Having a bunch of users all wanting the machine and control to work the way they think it should is and was a hot mess.
And mach was that way. With PP Tormach gained control of this and could limit the changes. This allowed better support and ability implement the software on A number of machines consistently.
I personally enjoy using the same control interface on a 4 axis mill, 2 axis lathe and a large format router and could still add robot arms and plasma cutting all running the same exact control interface. This is very appealing to me anyway.

You couple that with good cad and cam software and you have a complete TOOL SYSTEM that is just crazy easy to use.

Having a different interface with buttons and other features might be nice. I enjoy using it as is With a touch screen and normal keyboard.
I dont like having a mouse or using them in my shop and If they changed anything that would be the one thing I would like.

Only reason is I only use it to right mouse button click on a code line for the run from here menu. That is it!
Otherwise, I never use the mouse and it just takes up space. All other functions are on touch screen or Keyboard.

Just my opinion But I dont see much reason to complicate the interface much more than it is.
I load code, check tool offsets, set program code offsets, Fixture stock, and hit the run button on touch screen. Follow prompts and done.
All this is super easy to do with touch screen and keyboard. No real need for anything more

As for wizards or conversation code options and menus, I only use them for stock prep now and then.
All my code comes from fully simulated cam setups that include complete part models, part stock, fixtures, tools, tool holders and machine schematics.
Makes for precise drama free results every time. I made a habit of learning to do this and refining it to the point its easy and fast on mill, router and lathe.
My cam supports everything the machines can do including rigid peck tapping along with another dozen different strategies and parameters just for internal tapping and external threading on both mill and lathe. router has no encoder or reverse so thread milling is your only cam option.
Options like that might be useful to some people but in my opinion Tormach understands that many if not most of their users are going to use cam.
Cam software is mainstream these days and again in my opinion an essential part of the tool system. I think all three of my machines are boat anchors without it.
I see and read about people that brag about how good they are at hand coding. Im like ok, I often setup programs that have hundreds to hundreds of thousands of lines of Error free code. You could not even type a program header in the time it takes for me to do a complex part with 6 sides, 6 offsets and 10 tool changes per side. And use both lathe and mill to make it with machined results passed from lathe cam to mill cam. No extra or wasted tool paths on stock that is not there.
.
In short Without good cad cam and Good cad cam skills your not using 98% of the machines ability.

As for overall development and user added ability Im all for it. You never know what might be good and useful.
It just prefer it to be consistent and somewhat industry standard.

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Originally Posted by gerritv

Maybe we should focus on how to best share the excellent work Vmax and others have done instead of the side topics?
If Tormach is interested they will pipe in, if not at least we still benefit. To me that is the prime reuest from Vmax's first post in this thread. It is one portion that we have control over, since we have little to no influence directly with Tormach.

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sorry , it's not a side topic , the title is Tormach's suggestions list ?? Which is to suggest that all the ideas from here will be dropped on tormachs lap

Don't get me wrong because I'm all for mods and I can fully respect that . I just don't understand the reasoning behind a non tormach owner being so intent on changing pathpilot which is taken from linuxcnc , when they can go straight to the horse's mouth and get the support of a whole community

Sorry but I don.t try to force Tormach to do anything. It is their billywig. I do make suggestions and offer code to prove it can be done. I also do research in areas they cannot . Haas ??Botum of the barrel (;-). They sure sell a LOT of machines to be the bottum tier. They are also currently the industry standard for controls and options.

You say take it all over to LinuxCNC ?? I clearly remeber trying that and get the standard answer "IF you don't like the way we do things learn to program and change it youself"

Now saying that there ARE some helpful LinuxCNC folks but no more so that Tormach folks have been. I don;t NEED Tormach to change everything . I just need some advice on how to approach some PathPilot functions. And these are things that the LinuxCNC cannot answer either. They are Tormach scripted functions. In those cases I just needed a bit of advice . I don't need them to hold my hand. AND up to now I do not release PathPilot code into the wild. But if I have to go to the NON Tormach PathPilot users for help then I am obligated to return the help and favors and pass along PathPilot chages that we here have made.

The changes are NOT always a good thing as it does make updates difficult IF you do not log all the changes as you go. You do have to weight out the good and make sure it is worth it. I only promote changes that save time and money for the user. THings that are time and user tested to make life easier for the users. I thought at one time there was a group of Linuxcnc users that were building a PathPilot clone but I have not been able to find it lately..

For those that want a right mouse click keyboard option , tunr on the MouseKeys Linux function .Then when used the MENU key triggers the Right button click and the "5" key on the ten key side triggers a left mouse click. It works very well. Also it is ODD that on some things tabbing works and on other areas they locked out tabbing.


(;-) TP

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Originally Posted by vmax549

Sorry but I don.t try to force Tormach to do anything. It is their billywig. I do make suggestions and offer code to prove it can be done. I also do research in areas they cannot . Haas ??Botum of the barrel (;-). They sure sell a LOT of machines to be the bottum tier. They are also currently the industry standard for controls and options.

You say take it all over to LinuxCNC ?? I clearly remeber trying that and get the standard answer "IF you don't like the way we do things learn to program and change it youself"

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Haas would never survive the heavy jobbing shops I've worked in . I worked with haas in the last shop I was in , they are ok but they're the bottom of the barrel when it comes to industrial machines . I'd say fanuc would be more of an industrial standard since their controls are on most machines out there , and it's what the haas control would have been based on . The price point of haas is what makes them desirable not their quality .

Quote:

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Originally Posted by vmax549

. AND up to now I do not release PathPilot code into the wild. But if I have to go to the NON Tormach PathPilot users for help then I am obligated to return the help and favors and pass along PathPilot chages that we here have made.

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correct me if I am wrong - you want help to get what you want but you don't want to help anyone else , or share ??


I say take it to linuxcnc on the basic fact that it is an opensource software that anyone can dig their fingers into . Even though pathpilot was built on that it is still a proprietary software for their machines .
In regard to updates : IF a guy modifies either linuxcnc or pathpilot software to fully suit his needs then why update , what would be the benefit in it ?

I fully understand the attitude from the linux group . They have always wanted people to try on their own before giving any help or advise . And , I think they are right , if you want mods that are out of the norm then learn to do them , the benefit for you is quite large in many ways

I saw something about a pathpilot clone a while back to but I never followed it , it looks to me that qtdragon is as close as a guy will get and it looks like they did a fantastic job with it . If my machines didn't come with pathpilot then I'd probably be running it .
When it comes to creating control panels and such - I can understand some difficulty in the key coding or creating functions , but as it is most linuxcnc functions have keyboard shortcuts . All a guy needs is a programmable keyboard emulator buttons and a diy panel or pre-made matrix . It's pretty easy to make a control panel , I've used emulators or hacked keyboards .

Like I said previously don't get me wrong , there are some of us tormach owners who asked for simple (already in linuxcnc) functions to be added and they fell on deaf ears , so I wouldn't hold my breath expecting any help from tormach . Even the mere suggestion of doing mods comes back with the threat of warranty being voided

A long time ago I was a beta tester for Pathpilot, through my friend Bob (RIP) who developed the ATC.

I'm speculating here from a multi-decade career in software, much of it machine-control & similar-- Unless things have changed a lot, there are only a very small handful of people at Tormach working on PP code and they are busy doing whatever Marketing wants them to do-- which is mainly fixing bugs and supporting new upcoming machines / accessories. They aren't dumb and know there are other features they could be implementing but any remaining developer time is allocated, so for example rigid peck tap on MX machines is very cool but what percentage of Tormachs are MXs? Probably not that many and adding that is unlikely to move the machine-sales needle significantly, so Marketing puts something else higher on the priority list and the devs grumble.

Dropping in 3rd party code was a non-starter most places for a host of reasons, so it's tough to get an external 'I want' in unless you can convince people that development is worthwhile. When I worked in software, telling devs they were lazy or dumb or incompetent for not doing something "simple" was common and a sure way to get deprioritized because "simple" rarely is in a large code base. Laying out the changes, user benefits and minimizing risk (to the code and IP) was much better. Being a bit of a squeaky wheel was ok, being a PITA was not.

HAAS does well at the low end because they'll finance anyone with a pulse..

Rigid peck tapping took exactly 12 lines of code to implement from scratch. To change their G84 remapp it would take about 5-6 lines of code. HOW hard could that be to simply change the remap of G84 to inable the function (;-) IF the Q parmeter EXISTS loop the G33.1 call until the Zdepth is reached. ELSE 1 shot G33.1 rigid tapping..

IF I remember correctly EVERYONE in the CNC machine game offers Financing. Including Tormach. The industry could barely exist without it.

Mostly Haas got to where they are by Customer service and providing what the customers wanted. Seems to work OK for them.

(;-) TP

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Originally Posted by vmax549

IF I remember correctly EVERYONE in the CNC machine game offers Financing. Including Tormach. The industry could barely exist without it.

Mostly Haas got to where they are by Customer service and providing what the customers wanted. Seems to work OK for them.

(;-) TP

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not to be argumentativeness but every vehicle dealership offers financing as well . Budget differences is the reason you'll see more corolla's on the road than lamborghini . I spent 8 yrs dealing with haas tech's , the quality of their service is far from a selling feature .

There are a lot of threads within these forums where it's discussed the next step up from a tormach is a haas mini mill . The reason is the price factor for an introductory industrial machine . A mori of the same size for example costs much more , that same mori will be better built and out perform the haas . I can say this because I've worked on 25 yr old worn out mori's that blew away the new haas mills . The truth of the matter is that guys who need more step up to a haas and not a mori simply because of budget

Quote:

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Originally Posted by vmax549

Having things like Rigid PECK tapping can be a blessing to low powered spindles. It only took 12 lines of code to make it work properly . Just had to add the "Q" parameter to the G84 and do a remap on it.

(;-) TP

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Peck tapping has existed on every Tormach machine (with an encoder) since day one... You program successive G33.1 commands.

Can you call it into play with a single call??? nope Can you program the function on the fly ??? nope

Can you do all that NOW ??? YEP

(;-) TP