What's the Oddest Machine You Have Powered with LinuxCNC

That's impressive, do you use it for a business? And what do you do for CAD/CAM?

It uses a normal PC. (All I've ever tried.) The original PC was an older Pentium D that was unusual because it had both ISA and PCI slots. The machine's original DOS PC control (that was taken out by a lightning strike) used an ISA card with 32 ttl inputs and 32 outs to control the machine. We tried to replicate the old DOS pc control but we were never able to get the new pc to work correctly with the old software's security keys and the software's manufacturer had dropped support and moved on to WinCNC. So with the help of Andy Pugh who very kindly wrote a Linuxcnc driver for the old ISA io card, I started my journey with Linuxcnc and was able to get the machine running without any changes in hardware.

The Linuxcnc driver for the old ISA card worked like a giant parallel port, and used software stepgen, and worked ok and was at least equivalent to the old DOS control. But Linuxcnc was far more adaptable...

Unfortunately I was never able to get a version of Linux newer than Ubuntu 10.4 to work with Linuxcnc on that old ISA PC (I suspect that kernel support for the ISA was disabled for the later pre-compiled real time kernels.) So in order to move on and upgrade the machine to Linuxcnc v2.9 (needed for the extra joint support) I had to replace the old PC and ISA card with new Mesa hardware. I already had a 5i25 and 7i85S in the old pc but I needed to add a 7i84 for GPIO and a 7i88 for the 7 additional stepgens. The "new" computer is some random i5 PC pulled out of our IT department's closet of spare cast offs (a Linovo I think).

Yes it is used/owned by a business (my employer). (Yes I get to "play" with Linuxcnc as part of my day-job.) We also have 3 other cnc routers here that I converted to running Linuxcnc. I would consider the machine's we have running Linuxcnc to be "light duty" and they are mainly used for carving and engraving, and they can do that much faster than our large heavy duty routers that we use for milling out parts. The big heavy machines, are mostly all Fanuc controlled.

The CAD/CAM software I use is called Enroute. It's a package geared more toward the woodworking/sign making industries. I also use FreeCAD a little to do some things that Enroute can't.

I would love to see a video of the 8 spindles moving about.

If that counts, to me the "odd machine" is my small gear hobber. After buying a 2nd hand hob and trying to use it I fell into the rabbit hole.
There should be some effort to make it more userfriendly. I still have to change some parameters in the .hal to get it to work, based on the gear at hand. 

Andy Pugh provided the necessary help to get it up and running.
 


 

Ok, here is a brief video of me homing and jogging the 8 spindle machine.
photos.app.goo.gl/RjZLP94UZR4NFRmP9

Unfortunately I can't really video the machine actually carving production work, because the vacuum pump used for work holding must be replaced.

tommylight wrote:

Do my scratcher's count as odd?

 

Of course they do.  Those things are goofy

  Sometimes I wonder if I should have titled this topic as Unique Machines instead of Oddest Machine.
So far though the topic is working as intended. Really I just want to see the variety of what can or has
been done. That said please keep it it up.