[wendtmk]

Hi,

I disagree, Mach predates LinuxCNC. LinuxCNC grew out of EMC2 many years ago, and one of the EMC2 developers, Art Fennerty, branched out and wrote the parallel port driver for Windows which started
Mach and hobby CNC. LinuxCNC came later. Given that LinuxCNC is quasi-realtime, it can be a feedback controller, whereas Mach requires certain work arounds to achieve the same result.
It is fair to say that LinuxCNC supports rigid tapping etc 'natively' whereas Mach uses both realtime motion control features or the feedback features of servos, or even more recently Ethercat, a
distributed motion control set up.
Craig

LinuxCNC did not grow out of EMC2. They are one and the same, but the name had to be changed from EMC2 to LinuxCNC due to a threatening letter from a company called EMC willing to take the EMC2 developers to court over a copyright infringement of the name, even though the company had nothing to do with any kind of CNC software or hardware. EMC started it all and was around long before Mach became a viable software, and Mach does not predate it.. LinuxCNC is EMC, just with a different name.

Mark

[keitholivier]

LinuxCNC did not grow out of EMC2. They are one and the same, but the name had to be changed from EMC2 to LinuxCNC due to a threatening letter from a company called EMC willing to take the EMC2 developers to court over a copyright infringement of the name, even though the company had nothing to do with any kind of CNC software or hardware. EMC started it all and was around long before Mach became a viable software, and Mach does not predate it.. LinuxCNC is EMC, just with a different name.

Mark

Mark, thanks for setting things straight. For years it was known that the position control on EMC was better than the competition, but today with external motion controllers the differences are smaller than ever. And the FPGA boards just get cheaper and cheaper.

When I started my work with National instruments an FPGA motion control board cost several thousand $, today the NI stuff is more expensive than ever but the competition is now selling very powerful FPGA boards for just a fraction of the price. I have just been looking at a 4 channel FPGA board to do analysis of torsional vibration data and I can get a plug and play 4 channel FPGA board with a 98Mhz clock speed for $400, including software to configure and run it, capture data and do analysis. All included in the $400.