Mach 4???

[edclayton1]

What's the deal on Mach 4. I went to their website and they don't even say what versions of Windows it runs on. Does it work on 64 bit versions of Windows? And if so which flavors? Windows 7, 8, 8.1 10 ???
I tried to ask on their forum why doesn't Mach 3 run on Win 7 64 bit. They sent me a message that said they would be getting back with me. That was the last I ever heard from them. I posted that question several weeks ago now.
I see that CandCNC seems to be going over to Linux these days. I wonder why they don't seem to be moving to Mach 4? Anybody have any insight they can share? Its getting harder to find Win 7 32 bit these days and I would hate to have to learn Linux in the future just so I can run my plasma table. Linux is alright but its a lonely world when you need help over there. Not too many people I know run it for their mainstay computers.
Of course nobody I know seems to excited to give Windows 8, 8.1 or 10 a try either. I still hear Win 7 was the last good operating system Microsoft ever made. Just sayin...

[Simko]

When I talked to Tom at CandCNC about my project, I asked him the same question (why Linux and not Mach4?). He told me that the development for the plug-ins for Mach3 were very difficult and basically required them to hire a guy full-time to develop. On top of that, Mach3 gave almost no help in how to build the plug-ins to work with the software. Since Mach4 is nearly a complete re-write, none of the plug-in programming already done will transfer to Mach4. Since all new programming was needed, it was the perfect time to make the switch to an open-source program where they will have more control and ability to make changes to the software.

[edclayton1]

When I talked to Tom at CandCNC about my project, I asked him the same question (why Linux and not Mach4?). He told me that the development for the plug-ins for Mach3 were very difficult and basically required them to hire a guy full-time to develop. On top of that, Mach3 gave almost no help in how to build the plug-ins to work with the software. Since Mach4 is nearly a complete re-write, none of the plug-in programming already done will transfer to Mach4. Since all new programming was needed, it was the perfect time to make the switch to an open-source program where they will have more control and ability to make changes to the software.

Thanks for the reply. I sort of like that idea but then what about the sheetcam? Inkscape runs on Linux but it would be best to have all three programs in the same operating system platform i would think. Drawing/cam/control.
Also I hope this wont eventually make my new Candcnc equipment and software become obsolete and unsupported in the near future. I just bought it . I'm new to all this but so far i like mach3 and it seems to be an industry standard product which I really like. Lots of people around for support that'way. Thats what i dont like about Linux itself. Hardly anybody knows how to support or use it. Plus once you learn mach 3 you can use it on other tools like mills, lathes and routers. I like that idea too.

[beefy]

If I'm correct, Mach4 may not even have built in torch height control like Mach3 has. I have also heard lots of rumours that Mach4 is still very undeveloped. Anyway what I heard was enough for me not to look any further into it. I think I'll be eventually moving over to UCcnc and the UC300 board.

I looked into Linuxcnc but finding out how to customise it seems very difficult. I believe Lcnc is very powerful and stable but figuring it out is the hard part.

A company called Mesa Electronics makes a lot of electronics boards that the Linuxcnc guys use. I've ordered a voltage measuring board from them so I can make my own torch height control. It's been 5 weeks and the board has not even been posted yet. Worse they won't even answer my emails asking what is going on. I see another guy on the Linuxcnc forum is having exactly the same issue. Electronics boards which are supposed to be in stock are just not being sent out and Mesa is ignoring customer communication.

Now I hear a rumour that Mesa is wanting to only deal with OEM customers. Maybe their method of getting rid of us little fish is to piss us off by not sending out our purchase and ignoring our subsequent communication.

Still want to go Linuxcnc if you need parts from Mesa Electronics ???????????????

[Simko]

There were some other benefits to Linux that Tom described that basically boiled down to Linux being better at handling commands with less latency, requiring less tweaking and rules. I am not going to pretend that I knew exactly what he was talking about, but it seemed like Linux was able to pass commands more in real-time where in Windows, there was an intermediate step in Mach 3 that made very fast processes like THC difficult to do accurately.

[davek0974]

There were some other benefits to Linux that Tom described that basically boiled down to Linux being better at handling commands with less latency, requiring less tweaking and rules. I am not going to pretend that I knew exactly what he was talking about, but it seemed like Linux was able to pass commands more in real-time where in Windows, there was an intermediate step in Mach 3 that made very fast processes like THC difficult to do accurately.

Windows is a nightmare for programming machine control stuff, yes there are issues with latency that Linux does not suffer from, I nearly went linux on my new build but the controls were not quite ready so i stuck with Mach3.

As far as i know, mach4 is going to be a long time before it is stable and full-featured, a very long time.

[edclayton1]

There were some other benefits to Linux that Tom described that basically boiled down to Linux being better at handling commands with less latency, requiring less tweaking and rules. I am not going to pretend that I knew exactly what he was talking about, but it seemed like Linux was able to pass commands more in real-time where in Windows, there was an intermediate step in Mach 3 that made very fast processes like THC difficult to do accurately.

What you say here sounds correct to me. Windows has always been a resource hog no matter what you want to do with it, plus it has tons of problems with TSR's and memory leaks, etc.. I wish there was such thing as Android for PC's. Id switch all my computers over in a heart beat if I could. DOS and UNIX have always been much faster than Windows. The only reason I am curious about Mach 4 is it seems like I see some people on youtube using it and I am just curious about it. There website seems very vague on any sort of meaningful spec.'s and details about it, but they are selling it for even more than Mach 3 so I just want to know what the word on the street is about it.

[edclayton1]

There were some other benefits to Linux that Tom described that basically boiled down to Linux being better at handling commands with less latency, requiring less tweaking and rules. I am not going to pretend that I knew exactly what he was talking about, but it seemed like Linux was able to pass commands more in real-time where in Windows, there was an intermediate step in Mach 3 that made very fast processes like THC difficult to do accurately.

Windows is a nightmare for programming machine control stuff, yes there are issues with latency that Linux does not suffer from, I nearly went linux on my new build but the controls were not quite ready so i stuck with Mach3.

As far as i know, mach4 is going to be a long time before it is stable and full-featured, a very long time.

So you mean their like Microsoft. They roll out the product before its properly developed and expect their customers to be their beta testers after the fact and just hope and pray for hot fixes , patches and service packs to come along and patch it all together later if your lucky. I'd say on over half their operating systems they never really did get them fixed up correctly. i.e. Windows ME, Windows 95, Windows 8, 8.1, & 10 from what I hear so far.

[edclayton1]

If I'm correct, Mach4 may not even have built in torch height control like Mach3 has. I have also heard lots of rumours that Mach4 is still very undeveloped. Anyway what I heard was enough for me not to look any further into it. I think I'll be eventually moving over to UCcnc and the UC300 board.

I looked into Linuxcnc but finding out how to customise it seems very difficult. I believe Lcnc is very powerful and stable but figuring it out is the hard part.

A company called Mesa Electronics makes a lot of electronics boards that the Linuxcnc guys use. I've ordered a voltage measuring board from them so I can make my own torch height control. It's been 5 weeks and the board has not even been posted yet. Worse they won't even answer my emails asking what is going on. I see another guy on the Linuxcnc forum is having exactly the same issue. Electronics boards which are supposed to be in stock are just not being sent out and Mesa is ignoring customer communication.

Now I hear a rumour that Mesa is wanting to only deal with OEM customers. Maybe their method of getting rid of us little fish is to piss us off by not sending out our purchase and ignoring our subsequent communication.

Still want to go Linuxcnc if you need parts from Mesa Electronics ???????????????

Sounds like what I really wish for is that Microsoft would get it right again, (they do that every once in a while and that CandCNC would stick with them as like it or not MS is basically the only OS game in town for the mainstream masses at this point in time.

[davek0974]

There were some other benefits to Linux that Tom described that basically boiled down to Linux being better at handling commands with less latency, requiring less tweaking and rules. I am not going to pretend that I knew exactly what he was talking about, but it seemed like Linux was able to pass commands more in real-time where in Windows, there was an intermediate step in Mach 3 that made very fast processes like THC difficult to do accurately.

Windows is a nightmare for programming machine control stuff, yes there are issues with latency that Linux does not suffer from, I nearly went linux on my new build but the controls were not quite ready so i stuck with Mach3.

As far as i know, mach4 is going to be a long time before it is stable and full-featured, a very long time.

So you mean their like Microsoft. They roll out the product before its properly developed and expect their customers to be their beta testers after the fact and just hope and pray for hot fixes , patches and service packs to come along and patch it all together later if your lucky. I'd say on over half their operating systems they never really did get them fixed up correctly. i.e. Windows ME, Windows 95, Windows 8, 8.1, & 10 from what I hear so far.

Yes 100% it seems, there are many issues in Mach4 I read about, parts not working, features not written yet. I really could not see why they did not push there efforts to moving onto Linux, its the only way forwards i think.

I have been battling the wrath of Microsoft a lot in the last few weeks, I am setting up new servers for work, all virtualised, trying to move forward from the XP workstations we have as there are now security gaps in that OS that will not be patched. XP was really the best OS they had, apart from NT4 but that was a long time back now. We will be going for win10 but the privacy issues are frightening me a bit, there is no option though it seems.

[islander261]

Hi

I have been experimenting with Linux and LinuxCNC. My setup isn't ready to cut yet. I have never used Linux before and have no knowledge of non MS operating systems or development tools.

I started from scratch with a computer that has XP on it. I downloaded the Debian 8 Linux distro (took about 5 hours to get the whole torrent) and burned an install DVD. The install went very smoothly and was no more difficult than installing XP. The distro comes with everything thing you need except Sheetcam, Inkscape and LinuxCNC. I have since installed all of these and have them working. I even had to build a "custom" real time version of the Linux kernel to support my hardware. This part is not for the feint of heart but with help from the LinuxCNC forum it went surprisingly well for a first try. You will not need to do this if you have CandCNC hardware.

I also experimented with installing the whole thing directly using the LinuxCNC ditro. It was even easier than installing XP and produced a box with most of the Debian 7 (wheezy) distro and LinuxCNC installed.

I picked up a couple of old PCs at the dump to do these tests. While I am not cutting metal yet (still using my old Torchmate 3 system) this looks very promising. If I was running Mach and CandCNC hardware I wouldn't be too worried about migrating to their LinuxCNC distro. Just pick up an old PC someplace and try it ( or make it dual boot). I don't think that the Smooth Stepper works with LinuxCNC. That way you won't break your working system until your ready to switch.

This is just my experiments, YMMV. Right now I don't see any reason for someone running supported hardware to be worried about using LinuxCNC. If you have to roll your own (what I am doing) things will be much harder but still on par with Mach and random hardware.

John

[islander261]

Oh yeah

It took me about 5 weeks to get my Mesa hardware, only automated order ack, no replies to inquiries. Good news is they didn't charge my card until it shipped.

John

[tcaudle]

"Windows it the only true OS?" HP, DEC, IBM, Sperry and lots of other midrange computer mfg's might argue with that!.

Realtime: What does that mean? Windows is NOT a realtime multitasking OS. It places a lot of overhead and does not give priority to mundane things like talking to I/O Every release gets worse beacuse they see the world as the human inneraction with the machine and the "Cloud" as the place information will be stored. The Smooth stepper has to buffer motion commands from MACH (any version) and spool them out . That causes a disconnect between the position MACH is at and where the machine really is and inputs and outputs are out of sync The ESS deals with that by handling specific inputs directly (or a axis position IT moved) by updating the MACH registers after the fact. MACH4 is faster but you still have the "Mother May I" oversite of WINDOWS. So a realtime system is capable of doing multiple tasks without the overhead of the GUI or handling ports and I/O. There is NO buffereing in the MESA card. Motion is converted to motor pulses at extremely high speed . For this reason you need some horsepower on the PC. All PC's have inherent latency. Some are worse than others. It is not always how many cores the processor has or it base speed. LINUXCNC includes a test for PC latency and if its too high, performance will suffer. The solution right now (unless you want to spend a lot of time loading and testing) is to use a PC that has already shown to work.

Currently the only way to get the LinuxCNC and the CommandCNC for Linux from CandCNC is preloaded on a PC and setup for plasma/router. That is beacuse there are Linux kernal issues that have to be fixed (recompiled) to do the realtime operations. In the near future there will be a "Boot DVD" that everything is loaded ans setup and you can use with any PC to see if it will work and if it does do a one or two step install on the PC.

Personally I have nver been a Microsoft hater but with every release I start to move in the LINUX direction. I worked in a large IT dept and we had to support over 3000 pcs' running windows. Every upgrade was a huge deal.

I still use a Windows computer running WIN7 but that is because I have a whole stack of software I have bought and used for years (like CorelDraw) that is not available in LINUX. In most circumstances there are as good if not beeter LINUX alternatives but I have 5 years embedded usage that I hate to lose.

I am doing more an more on my really fast LINUX system (including this post) . Someday maybe we can discuss where LINUX came from and what its being used for, to give some context to the story.

[Gustav129]

There were some other benefits to Linux that Tom described that basically boiled down to Linux being better at handling commands with less latency, requiring less tweaking and rules. I am not going to pretend that I knew exactly what he was talking about, but it seemed like Linux was able to pass commands more in real-time where in Windows, there was an intermediate step in Mach 3 that made very fast processes like THC difficult to do accurately.

What you say here sounds correct to me. Windows has always been a resource hog no matter what you want to do with it, plus it has tons of problems with TSR's and memory leaks, etc.. I wish there was such thing as Android for PC's. Id switch all my computers over in a heart beat if I could. DOS and UNIX have always been much faster than Windows. The only reason I am curious about Mach 4 is it seems like I see some people on youtube using it and I am just curious about it. There website seems very vague on any sort of meaningful spec.'s and details about it, but they are selling it for even more than Mach 3 so I just want to know what the word on the street is about it.

Nice to see Rathdrum. Maybe we may have crossed paths in the past few years. Anyways, Android is the Linux Kernel, so in essence Linux is Android for PC>