[whitehedr]

your controller box sitting out in the open like you have it could attract swarf and cause you untold grief.

RWW

[cameraguy]

A friend who also has a Taig and uses Mach3 was visiting quickly this weekend and I showed him around EMC2. He was impressed with the 3D toolpath view that EMC2 with Axis gives you.

The only Mach3 feature that I miss on EMC is being able to jog using keyboard controls at different speeds. In Mach3 you can rapid jog using shift-arrows, or slow jog just using the arrows. In EMC2 you need to adjust the jog rate slider to change this.

One downside to using EMC is that I haven't found good CAM software for Linux.

I also really like the EMC toolpath views and options to change them.

Since EMC is opensource, I think that would be a very good and simple thing to add. I will have to ask my Linux geek friend how hard it would be to add that. EMC used to be very rudimentary, but it is quickly becoming a very desirable program due to people adding things like that to it.
It also means it is more reliable and doesn't suffer some of the technical issues the 'other' program has, as people can openly discuss and fix the issues. (Since a moderator here is actually an employee of that other company and patrols CNCZone removing any references to people having any trouble that particular product, I can't mention the name or you won't see this post. You may not see discussions of it here, but just like anything else it isn't always perfect.)

I haven't found good CAM software for Linux either, but I use a dedicated machine to run the CNC. I use just Windows on my normal desktop and EMC on the machine controller.

Good luck with the new Taig, they are a lot of fun!

[cameraguy]

Just talked to my programmer friend, he has a Taig too. He said adding the different jog speeds to EMC should be trivial. We are going to work on it tomorrow. If its as easy as it sounds, we should be able to upload a submission pretty soon. Don't know how often they include those in new releases, but I can always send you an unofficial patch if you want.

[rwmorris]

Thanks so much for posting all this data! I'm dangerously close to ordering one of these mills from deepgroove1 myself. Hopefully by Friday... We will see.

Cheers,

Robert M.