[Mecanix]

Hi Joeavaerage. Slight confusion here, my suggestion was to OP, who've requested to be called J. Unless you're both the same user/account then my bad.

Noticed he's geared up with a proprietary DDCS Control, one of those commonly wired-up and easy to retrofit for a scalable solution like Linuxcnc 2.9. My recommendation is based on experience with the real-time kernel and a closed loop w/ feedback implementation. I'd like to think that Linuxcnc (with FPGA powered) blows the competition by worlds distance; Sinumerik Fanuc Heidenhain etc. In terms of scalability it certainly wins anyway.

Can't comment on Mach4 neither compare to it. Never used it.

All the best and apologies for the J/naming confusion.

[joeavaerage]

Hi Mecanix,
apologies, I thought your post was directed to me.

LinuxCNC is certainly a way forward for OP. Having said that LinuxCNC certainly favours strong programmers and scares non or weak programmers off.
There is no way that LinuxCNC with TCP kinematics could be said to be turn-key.The only solutions that I know of which are turn-key or nearly so are Sinumerik, Fanuc etc.....
and none of them are hobby class.

Craig

[Mecanix]

No worries, J! I have the Sinumeriks 828 (4ax mill) and a 808 (2ax lathe) at the large'r shop. Both on the v4.5 firmware. They are great real-timers nanobits and all, sure, but man... p r o p r i e t a r y l i c e n s e d e v e r y t h i n g. Don't you ever think of enhancing those controls it'll cost ya 3k per feature minimum.

At home, in the much greater shop (a 20sqm garden shed!), everything is on Lcnc 2.9. That's where prototyping is carried and one-offs are made. Note that Linuxcnc is pre-compiled for users (no specific environment required) although the source code is made public domain for those who wish to scale it up to their needs. HALs and INIs (examples?) are also public domain along with an amazing knowledge base/forum online community supporting it. Shall you be stuck with anything.

Also happy for you to PM if you're diving into this route. Wish you all the best of luck with your implementation and projects in a meantime. Thumbs up on your 5ax trunnion add-on, looks awesome.