Hale to QtDragon contributers

I just wanted to say how much I appreciate all the support I have received on this forum. I have an old CNC 5x10ft professional router from the 1990s. I converted it to Mach3 and an Ethernet Smoothstepper 7 years ago and the machine sees 10-20 hours of work a week. I updated the stepper drivers a year or so ago to improve speed. It has worked well til maybe 4 months ago and then it seemed to get a little flaky. Tried everything to diagnose the problem. It would scrap expensive laminate or solidsurface due to loosing its home position randomly. I decided Mach3 was to blame thinking all the stupid windows updates finally caught up to the unsupported Mach3 software. So I decided to switch to Linuxcnc and a Mesa 7I92. I really looked around at all the screens that were popular with LinuxCNC and decided that the QtDragon looked the most promising. I knew that my choice would be a big decision because I knew I would invest a lot of hours configuring the machine for my needs. I had quite a leaning curve to climb but I must say This machine runs so smooth and reliable. Better than ever, the realtime nature of LinuxCNC make everything so much more responsive than Mach3 could ever dream of. I probably have 60 hours of cut time on the router with QtDragon_hd and it just rocks. Not one flake out. I am ripping Baltic Birch 15mm ply at 350IPM with a 1/4" router bit. I plan to replace Mach3 on my Bridgeport Boss3 CNC mill (4th axis too) soon. I want to give a big shout out to "cmorley" for so much support and quick response on the QtDragon screen improvements. I also want to thank "persei8" as well helping me in my early stages. Great job people!

Kent

Thanks for expressing your story to linuxcnc.
I find it motivating to hear about people using and finding useful object that include my work.
Keeping in mind nothing in linuxcnc is one person.

i'll put a huge shout out to Jim (persei8)
He made the design, layout and style or qtdragon (in gscreen and qtvcp!)
Then he donated his code to linuxcnc and continues to send code and feedback.

Also to Phill (Pillc54) if you want to use plasma - check it out.

These guys amaze me what they can do with my crude building blocks.

And to users like yourself Kent, without feedback, fixes and new ideas are much harder to come to fruition.


Chris

The router is still running great BTW. This year I converted my Bridgeport Boss3 to LinuxCNC. I went from steppers/Mach3 to full 3 axis SureServos from Automation Direct and Mesa 7i92+7i85S+7i84 plus a 4th rotary servo. Loving the LinuxCNC, Still tweaking but I can now run those fancy high-speed (relative) roughing tool paths that the old dumb factory stepper drives/motors could never do. Tracking error at the motors is down to +-0.00015"! Thanks again to the QT_Dragon boys for the all the help!