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cnc machine nearly there

paulm

paulm

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I finally got the power supply for my cnc machine today and unfortunately all I was told about the laptop by David and Brian was right. The parallel port on a docking station is a virtual port and no matter how I set it, it works for a short while and then slows down.
 
Neil

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paulm said:
I finally got the power supply for my cnc machine today and unfortunately all I was told about the laptop by David and Brian was right. The parallel port on a docking station is a virtual port and no matter how I set it, it works for a short while and then slows down.
Click to expand...

I am afraid to confess that I haven't got a scooby what you're on, or what you're on about. If you're having problems with your ports, either get a chart or stick to Madeira.
 
Grump

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I have an experiment to do with mine booting from sd card though a thin client with // port, I'll let you know if it works.
The thin client did have 256 ram I have upped that to 1g which is all the board will see but should be ample.
Do you need a pc? I do have spare.
 
paulm

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Grump said:
I have an experiment to do with mine booting from sd card though a thin client with // port, I'll let you know if it works.
The thin client did have 256 ram I have upped that to 1g which is all the board will see but should be ample.
Do you need a pc? I do have spare.
Click to expand...

That would be interesting to see Brian. I don't need one at the moment thanks, I'll see whats in the shed first.

Its good to see that we can talk about something that Neil can't write war and peace about :funny:
 
paulm

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Thanks for having a look but I cannot find anything either. Having the printer port in the laptop is ok, its when you have it in the docking station because then its a virtual printer port unfortunately.
 
Grump

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Paul do you think David and myself among many others have not tried and failed, give in mate and listen to the voice of experience.
There is a hard way and an easy way, take the easy option and use a dedicated parallel port. Not pretty but functional.
Take the route that is proven to work.
Download a copy of linuxcnc and burn it to cd run as live cd, use the hdd for storage only any old pc with // will work. 1g ram is more than adequate for the job.
You'll be etching in minutes with the built in software.
I have a file of fonts and I mean a file of fonts, if you and David would like a copy I can upload them to somewhere later.
 
paulm

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Grump said:
Paul do you think David and myself among many others have not tried and failed, give in mate and listen to the voice of experience.
There is a hard way and an easy way, take the easy option and use a dedicated parallel port. Not pretty but functional.
Take the route that is proven to work.
Download a copy of linuxcnc and burn it to cd run as live cd, use the hdd for storage only any old pc with // will work. 1g ram is more than adequate for the job.
You'll be etching in minutes with the built in software.
I have a file of fonts and I mean a file of fonts, if you and David would like a copy I can upload them to somewhere later.
Click to expand...

Thanks Brian, I know exactly what your saying but I'm soooooo close now I just can't give up... yet

I would love the file please some time.
 
Grump

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I'm soooooo close now
Click to expand...
So was I or so I thought.
I still keep trying to make it more portable to no avail.
Sitting it on top of the rackmount is my best attempt so far.
I am now thinking of putting it all in a cabinet on wheels so I can house the increasing amount of tools I have, maybe a rise and fall monitor or fixed to the inside of a lid to open and show the working gubbins.
I saw a film last night with a hot dog barrow in New York and that started me dreaming about pushing my cnc barrow through the town center engraving and honing knives and stuff init?
Like the words of the old song init? "All me life I wanet to be a barra boy" :pounds::pounds::mooney:
 
paulm

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I can see it now Brian, out on the streets shouting 'Any ole iron', 'Any ole etchings', 'Any ole knives'.....

I promise I'll give up soon on trying to get this working but I just hate not being able to do this.
 
paulm

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I think I've done it. I downloaded the RMclock CPU utility ticked the box "Run HLT command when OS is idle" and its now seems to work on every axis all the time even after I've hit the limiter and had to reset. Obviously it needs more testing but its looking good.

all I need now is some g code to run to check it out proper
 
Grump

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Well done that man.
Lets hope it is good for you. 10 out 10 for perseverance but you are still saddled with windoze and all it glitches init?
Don't forget XP gets support taken away after the glorious 8th of April, no more updates to ruin your pc so turn off your updates or risk it breaking when java or flash want to install more crap.
G-code is the easy part you should be flying whilst i am typing. I expect to see pics by the end play today init?
 
paulm

paulm

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Grump said:
Well done that man.
Lets hope it is good for you. 10 out 10 for perseverance but you are still saddled with windoze and all it glitches init?
Don't forget XP gets support taken away after the glorious 8th of April, no more updates to ruin your pc so turn off your updates or risk it breaking when java or flash want to install more crap.
G-code is the easy part you should be flying whilst i am typing. I expect to see pics by the end play today init?
Click to expand...

ha ha, give me a chance, I've only just learned how to press the buttons to make the axis work. I guess I need to flash up artcam or the likes now. Thanks for the updates advice I forgot about that although they're certainly packing in the updates at the moment.
 
Penpal

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Brian Rags Bags Bottles and Bones sounds familiar. Made redundant at age 55 then later at 62 1/2 worth overcoming IMHO however it was sweet to hang up the gloves the second time. Interesting language computer speak. Another bottomless pit. trusr you find work soon.

Peter.:thumbs::thumbs:
 


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