New Mill Build...Can I use LinuxCNC?

to use Geany or Gedit would be easier

Ok great that’s what I will do...I just used Vim because that was the default program it opened with...simpler and easier sounds great lol...thanks, Andy

PCW that was the problem! ...now to figure out a optimized driver timing...am I correct that the lower you can set these timing numbers, As long as the steppers still function, the faster the machine can move?...I set everything back to the default settings as far as driver timing. When continuous jogging anything over 40 in/m the steppers start losing steps. What is a respectable speed? I realize that the mechanics of the machine will play a role into the speed, just trying to get an idea of what to expect. Thanks so much, Andy

It all depends.... If the pulses are too short, they won't be seen, if they are too long they will limit maximum stepgen frequency. I looked at it based on the motor RPM.
With An Arduino, I could not get over about 400 rpm
With a Mesa I could get to about 800 rpm. I think I settled on about 750 rpm as being the rapid speed. Thats a number you can reconcile with torque charts.
I played with the stepgen frequency by altering the microstepping and eventually Linuxcc reported an error saying it could not honour that frequency. I settled on 20x microstepping using Longs Motor DM542A and 48v power supply.
I still use 20x with the Lam drivers I am using but I will be seeing if I can increase the microstepping one day. These high quality drives should go a lot further.

Oh and the acceleration settings are the biggest culprit to lost steps.

and try typing

sudo apt-get install geany

Its the best text editor I've found and it should appear in your menus...

In general, I would use something like 5000,5000,20000,20000 for default timing
numbers. Unless you get a warning from LinuxCNC that the step timing is limiting
your maximum velocity, these numbers will have no effect on your maximum speeds.

You may be able to reach higher speeds by

1. Lowering your acceleration (currently you have 30 IPS/S accel
this means you get to full speed (1 IPS) in 33 ms, that may be asking too
much of your step motors/mechanics)

2. Raising the u step ratio on your drives. This has the effect of reducing vibration
and resonances which tend to cause stalling