[Emc-users] How to Migrate from Mach3 to LinuxCNC

[Jack Coats]

There is an article in Digital Machinist, Vol 9 No 3, Fall 2014 with the title
"Migrating from Mach3 to LinuxCNC" by Thomas Allsup (page 24).

In case someone wants to check it out. I haven't read it yet.

Just thought someone might be interested.

<> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I
learn." - Ben Franklin

[Dave Cole]

Whoa....That's a body blow to the Mach3 camp.

The article they wanted: Migrating from Mach3 to Mach4 :-)

The article they got: Migrating from Mach3 to LinuxCNC... :-(

Dave

Post by Jack Coats
There is an article in Digital Machinist, Vol 9 No 3, Fall 2014 with the title
"Migrating from Mach3 to LinuxCNC" by Thomas Allsup (page 24).
In case someone wants to check it out. I haven't read it yet.
Just thought someone might be interested.

<> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I
learn." - Ben Franklin
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[Bruce Layne]

I'm always trying to nudge my friends and YouTube garage machining
buddies to adopt LinuxCNC. It's good natured, but I am serious. I
notice reluctance on their part, but I try to reassure them by telling
them, at this point, I really don't see how Mach could be any easier to
install and configure. Other than sending a free technician to do it
for you, it's about as easy as it gets. But there still seems to be
some hesitation. They seem to regard me as the siren of Greek
mythology, trying to entice their ship onto the rocks.

Last week, a friend's hard drive crashed on his mill and he spent most
of the week getting it running again, and most of that of course was
Windows and Mach. I told him that I routinely backup the small LinuxCNC
folder by dragging it to a USB thumb drive. That contains all of my
machine configuration files and all of my G code. If my hard drive
died, I'd plug in a new one, pop in the Ubuntu/LinuxCNC thumb drive and
reinstall everything in a few minutes, then drag the old LinuxCNC folder
to the new hard drive and Bob's your uncle. I'm making chips. Tell me
again how Linux is too geeky complicated and Mach and Windows is so easy?

There are plenty of people who genuinely like Mach and do a lot of free
advertising for them, including hardware manufacturers who say things
like, "No matter what you start with, you'll end up using Mach." But
for each of these Mach cheerleaders, there seem to be a person on the
serious side of hobby machining, typically people who started with CNC
as a hobby who are now doing KickStarter manufacturing, opening small
town machine shops, etc., and they started with Mach but seem unhappy
with it. They're the Mach captives. They use Mach, including the more
advanced features, but they make disparaging comments. I watch their
YouTube videos and they say, "Well, I went back out to the shop and Mach
had crashed again. Big surprise." But these captives seem to be
suffering from the CNC version of Stockholm Syndrome. They're
sympathizing with their captors. When I suggest how easy it'd be to
swap hard drives and install LinuxCNC and use the same hardware, (and
I've even volunteered to do it for them) and if they didn't like it they
could put the old hard drive back in and not miss a thing, they mumble a
bit and change the subject. Typically, their little CNC machine shipped
with Mach and they're afraid to wander off the reservation.

Here's a partial summary of the issue of Digital Machinist that Jack
mentioned:

http://www.digitalmachinist.net/comingsoon/contents/view

There's an article in there (that I haven't read) about using LED ring
lights for spindle mounted workpiece lighting. I bought a very nice
Aluminator 2.0 LED ring light on eBay on August 30th that's made to
magnetically attach to the spindle. It's very nice and well worth the
US$125 on my milling machine. My old eyes need all the light I can get.

www.ebay.com/itm/400759473641

On October 7th, I bought an 80mm Angel Eyes LED ring light on eBay for
US$11 that's marketed as accent lighting to surround an automotive
headlight. It requires half an amp at 12 volts and it will require a
bit of redneck engineering (I'm thinking 3M VHB double sided foam tape,
or I may machine a PVC housing) to attach to the 80mm water cooled
spindle motor on my CNC router.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/281435821348

Post by Dave Cole
Whoa....That's a body blow to the Mach3 camp.
The article they wanted: Migrating from Mach3 to Mach4 :-)
The article they got: Migrating from Mach3 to LinuxCNC... :-(
Dave

Post by Jack Coats
There is an article in Digital Machinist, Vol 9 No 3, Fall 2014 with the title
"Migrating from Mach3 to LinuxCNC" by Thomas Allsup (page 24).
In case someone wants to check it out. I haven't read it yet.
Just thought someone might be interested.

<> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I
learn." - Ben Franklin
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[Dave Caroline]

I would say the migration has started. I went to the UK Midlands Model
Engineer Show on Friday. instead of a few users showing Mach there was
only one and he was dual booting to linuxcnc to show threading.
Another had a small gantry with linuxcnc

An improvement on previous years.

Dave Caroline

Post by Bruce Layne
I'm always trying to nudge my friends and YouTube garage machining
buddies to adopt LinuxCNC. It's good natured, but I am serious. I
notice reluctance on their part, but I try to reassure them by telling
them, at this point, I really don't see how Mach could be any easier to
install and configure. Other than sending a free technician to do it
for you, it's about as easy as it gets. But there still seems to be
some hesitation. They seem to regard me as the siren of Greek
mythology, trying to entice their ship onto the rocks.
Last week, a friend's hard drive crashed on his mill and he spent most
of the week getting it running again, and most of that of course was
Windows and Mach. I told him that I routinely backup the small LinuxCNC
folder by dragging it to a USB thumb drive. That contains all of my
machine configuration files and all of my G code. If my hard drive
died, I'd plug in a new one, pop in the Ubuntu/LinuxCNC thumb drive and
reinstall everything in a few minutes, then drag the old LinuxCNC folder
to the new hard drive and Bob's your uncle. I'm making chips. Tell me
again how Linux is too geeky complicated and Mach and Windows is so easy?
There are plenty of people who genuinely like Mach and do a lot of free
advertising for them, including hardware manufacturers who say things
like, "No matter what you start with, you'll end up using Mach." But
for each of these Mach cheerleaders, there seem to be a person on the
serious side of hobby machining, typically people who started with CNC
as a hobby who are now doing KickStarter manufacturing, opening small
town machine shops, etc., and they started with Mach but seem unhappy
with it. They're the Mach captives. They use Mach, including the more
advanced features, but they make disparaging comments. I watch their
YouTube videos and they say, "Well, I went back out to the shop and Mach
had crashed again. Big surprise." But these captives seem to be
suffering from the CNC version of Stockholm Syndrome. They're
sympathizing with their captors. When I suggest how easy it'd be to
swap hard drives and install LinuxCNC and use the same hardware, (and
I've even volunteered to do it for them) and if they didn't like it they
could put the old hard drive back in and not miss a thing, they mumble a
bit and change the subject. Typically, their little CNC machine shipped
with Mach and they're afraid to wander off the reservation.
Here's a partial summary of the issue of Digital Machinist that Jack
http://www.digitalmachinist.net/comingsoon/contents/view
There's an article in there (that I haven't read) about using LED ring
lights for spindle mounted workpiece lighting. I bought a very nice
Aluminator 2.0 LED ring light on eBay on August 30th that's made to
magnetically attach to the spindle. It's very nice and well worth the
US$125 on my milling machine. My old eyes need all the light I can get.
www.ebay.com/itm/400759473641
On October 7th, I bought an 80mm Angel Eyes LED ring light on eBay for
US$11 that's marketed as accent lighting to surround an automotive
headlight. It requires half an amp at 12 volts and it will require a
bit of redneck engineering (I'm thinking 3M VHB double sided foam tape,
or I may machine a PVC housing) to attach to the 80mm water cooled
spindle motor on my CNC router.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/281435821348

Post by Dave Cole
Whoa....That's a body blow to the Mach3 camp.
The article they wanted: Migrating from Mach3 to Mach4 :-)
The article they got: Migrating from Mach3 to LinuxCNC... :-(
Dave

Post by Jack Coats
There is an article in Digital Machinist, Vol 9 No 3, Fall 2014 with the title
"Migrating from Mach3 to LinuxCNC" by Thomas Allsup (page 24).
In case someone wants to check it out. I haven't read it yet.
Just thought someone might be interested.

<> ... Jack

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart"... Colossians 3:23
"Anyone who has never made a mistake, has never tried anything new." -
Albert Einstein
"You don't manage people; you manage things. You lead people." -
Admiral Grace Hopper, USN
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I
learn." - Ben Franklin
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Monitor 10 servers for $9/Month.
Get alerted through email, SMS, voice calls or mobile push
notifications.
Take corrective actions from your mobile device.
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_______________________________________________
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Get alerted through email, SMS, voice calls or mobile push notifications.
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[John Alexander Stewart]

Ah! But, was the author successful? (have to wait for my copy to arrive so
that I can find out!)

You (meaning, all of us) must remember that many people are either 1) low
on the computer knowledge scale, or 2) reluctant to change.

I think most/all of us here are able to think out of the box, but others
are not.

Windows still has a strangle hold on desktop computing, even though
Microsoft is nowhere to be seen in the mobile field. For the first time
since 1996, I'm getting a windows desktop at work; Microsoft still has a
stranglehold on corporate/government offices.

JohnS
​

[Lester Caine]

Post by John Alexander Stewart
Windows still has a strangle hold on desktop computing, even though
Microsoft is nowhere to be seen in the mobile field. For the first time
since 1996, I'm getting a windows desktop at work; Microsoft still has a
stranglehold on corporate/government offices.

My laptop with the CAD/CAM on is still W7, but for the last couple of
months it has had a problem with 'updates' and while some are now
getting through, I can't run update manually. As a result I've been
looking at the Linux alternatives, and things like FreeCAD, LibreCAD and
since I'm also on PCB layout, KiCAD are pushing to be usable
replacements. Since the rest of my desktop has been Linux for many years
it's a refreshing change!

Started to document the change
http://medw.co.uk/wiki/Living+with+CAD-CAM+today

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 19 October 2014 10:22:07 Bruce Layne did opine

Post by Bruce Layne
I'm always trying to nudge my friends and YouTube garage machining
buddies to adopt LinuxCNC. It's good natured, but I am serious. I
notice reluctance on their part, but I try to reassure them by telling
them, at this point, I really don't see how Mach could be any easier to
install and configure. Other than sending a free technician to do it
for you, it's about as easy as it gets. But there still seems to be
some hesitation. They seem to regard me as the siren of Greek
mythology, trying to entice their ship onto the rocks.
Last week, a friend's hard drive crashed on his mill and he spent most
of the week getting it running again, and most of that of course was
Windows and Mach. I told him that I routinely backup the small
LinuxCNC folder by dragging it to a USB thumb drive. That contains
all of my machine configuration files and all of my G code. If my
hard drive died, I'd plug in a new one, pop in the Ubuntu/LinuxCNC
thumb drive and reinstall everything in a few minutes, then drag the
old LinuxCNC folder to the new hard drive and Bob's your uncle. I'm
making chips. Tell me again how Linux is too geeky complicated and
Mach and Windows is so easy?
There are plenty of people who genuinely like Mach and do a lot of free
advertising for them, including hardware manufacturers who say things
like, "No matter what you start with, you'll end up using Mach." But
for each of these Mach cheerleaders, there seem to be a person on the
serious side of hobby machining, typically people who started with CNC
as a hobby who are now doing KickStarter manufacturing, opening small
town machine shops, etc., and they started with Mach but seem unhappy
with it. They're the Mach captives. They use Mach, including the more
advanced features, but they make disparaging comments. I watch their
YouTube videos and they say, "Well, I went back out to the shop and
Mach had crashed again. Big surprise." But these captives seem to be
suffering from the CNC version of Stockholm Syndrome. They're
sympathizing with their captors. When I suggest how easy it'd be to
swap hard drives and install LinuxCNC and use the same hardware, (and
I've even volunteered to do it for them) and if they didn't like it
they could put the old hard drive back in and not miss a thing, they
mumble a bit and change the subject. Typically, their little CNC
machine shipped with Mach and they're afraid to wander off the
reservation.
Here's a partial summary of the issue of Digital Machinist that Jack
http://www.digitalmachinist.net/comingsoon/contents/view
There's an article in there (that I haven't read) about using LED ring
lights for spindle mounted workpiece lighting. I bought a very nice
Aluminator 2.0 LED ring light on eBay on August 30th that's made to
magnetically attach to the spindle. It's very nice and well worth the
US$125 on my milling machine. My old eyes need all the light I can get.
www.ebay.com/itm/400759473641
On October 7th, I bought an 80mm Angel Eyes LED ring light on eBay for
US$11 that's marketed as accent lighting to surround an automotive
headlight. It requires half an amp at 12 volts and it will require a
bit of redneck engineering (I'm thinking 3M VHB double sided foam tape,
or I may machine a PVC housing) to attach to the 80mm water cooled
spindle motor on my CNC router.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/281435821348

I went to his "store" but the smallest was a 60mm, still too big, need
about 40mm maximum on my toy mill. But 2 of them for 18.95 USD seems like
a heck of a deal. Available either in the exaggerated warm white, or in
blue heavy white. In my case, a 20mm would be better than the leds in the
endoscopy camera I have on the mill. That would get the light farther off
axis and reduce the specular reflections that rather effectively blind it
when searching for a target scratch. The leds in it are on about a 5mm
circle surrounding the camera lens. That is effectively the same as
holding the flashlight rear end on your nose when surveying your real
estate for eyes looking back at you in the bush after dark.

If the reflection is red, only 2 candidates, a Siamese cat, or a human.
Act accordingly if its human & doesn't belong there.

[...]

Cheers, Gene Heskett

[p***@wpnet.us]

Way back when I started in on home CNC, I did a trial between Mach3 and EMC (pre-EMC2/LinuxCNC days), and Mach3 won resoundingly for it's vastly better "fit and finish and useabiliy". Today I'm starting in with LinuxCNC again on a lathe conversion and eventually a conversion on a CNC mill with a "proper commercial control". While I'm finding LinuxCN vastly improved from the EMC days, it is still behind Mach3 in terms of "fit and finish" as well as documentation (terrible documentation seems to be the bane of all things Linux).

I think there will be two drivers to a shift from Mach3 to LinuxCNC if one does occur, and those will be:

1. General hate for Win8. Win XP, 2K and 7 were fine, 8 is an absolute POS.

2. Better hardware available to work with LinuxCNC, notably the Mesa boards. We still need to get away from reliance on ever changing system slots and to USB or Ethernet linked motion controllers though.

What will not be a driver of any switch is "fit and finish" as LinuxCNC still lags Mach3 in this area. Indeed I have read posts in the LinuxCNC world with people extolling how they don't want LinuxCNC to look like a commercial CNC control which is mind boggling since the commercial controls have evolved far longer than LinuxCNC and set the standard in UI for machinists.

[Bruce Layne]

Post by p***@wpnet.us
What will not be a driver of any switch is "fit and finish" as LinuxCNC still lags Mach3 in this area.

Like all matters of aesthetics, user interface appearance is very
subjective. However, I consider the LinuxCNC user interface to be
vastly superior to Mach 3. Whenever I see Mach 3, the graphical
interface looks clunky with very jaggy edges on the buttons and a very
low-res look. I also think the bright primary colors lack a
professional appearance although I suppose the colorful screen looks
friendly to many Mach users, in much the same way that "DON'T PANIC"
boldly emblazoned on the cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
increases its consumer appeal. To me, the colorful low resolution
interface looks like educational software for pre-school children, circa
1986.

Mach is a very successful product, and I'm too much of a defender of
free market capitalism to begrudge them their success. They are clearly
satisfying a significant portion of the hobbyist and low-end
professional CNC market, and more power to them. I don't get it, but I
don't need to get it.

LinuxCNC doesn't look the same as many of the modern commercial CNC
controllers from the big name machine manufacturers, but it looks
similar to me. I love the graphical representation of the tool path.
It does everything I need, and if I need anything else, I'm free to roll
up my sleeves and start coding.

With the ready availability of very low cost small commercial milling
machines on the used market in this down economy (at least in the US)
and the ease of installing and configuring LinuxCNC, I'm not sure how
some of the manufacturers of $10,000 to $20,000 Mach based stepper motor
driven machines are selling their products. I know people just starting
out want a turn key solution with that new machine smell, but it looks
like the market would spontaneously generate a few businesses that
specialized in buying used machines in good mechanical condition with
outdated or blown controls, cleaning them up, giving them a new coat of
epoxy paint, installing LinuxCNC with readily available interface and
drive electronics, and selling these much more capable machines for less
than a new hobby machine... complete with delivery, setup, and two hours
of training.

[andy pugh]

Post by Jack Coats
There is an article in Digital Machinist, Vol 9 No 3, Fall 2014 with the title
"Migrating from Mach3 to LinuxCNC" by Thomas Allsup (page 24).

I wonder why anyone would want to?
By which I mean, if you have a working, paid for Mach3 installation
running a machine and making parts, why would you throw it all up in
the air to change to some different (and approximately equivalent)
software?

[Dave Cole]

Post by andy pugh

Post by Jack Coats
There is an article in Digital Machinist, Vol 9 No 3, Fall 2014 with the title
"Migrating from Mach3 to LinuxCNC" by Thomas Allsup (page 24).

I wonder why anyone would want to?
By which I mean, if you have a working, paid for Mach3 installation
running a machine and making parts, why would you throw it all up in
the air to change to some different (and approximately equivalent)
software?

I would assume that he ran into some issues with Mach3 and decided to
move to LinuxCNC.
It is not difficult to find issues with Mach3 that are hard or
impossibile to resolve.

I was starting to feel bad for the Mach3 camp, then I saw that there are
two other articles in the magazine that are about Mach3.

Dave





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[Jack Coats]

I agree.

If you have problems with Mach, for whatever reasons, LinuxCNC is a
great, low cost, experiment before tossing more money at it.

If you are an experimenter at heart, having BOTH is a good idea. Most
of us are not in that position. LinuxCNC seems to scale from big
hardware to small desktop (or smaller, or larger depending on your
needs).

G/M-code support can be done on minimal machines to anything bigger.
(There are DOS, RaspberryPi, and arduino implementations of
interpreters.) Once you get to desktop size machines or larger it
takes to run LinuxCNC or Mach much more can be done in the way of
trajectory planning, etc.

For the cost for most of our machines, the incremental price of Mach
with Windows is real but not 'significant' compared to what it takes
for us to build and run our machines. Still, I would rather spend the
money elsewhere if possible.

I do see WHY some go to Mach. They don't know or trust 'free
software'. An irrational fear, but real. So they would rather buy a
solution they 'can get support for' rather than having to get involved
in a community to know how to obtain real good, fast support. So if
they feel their time is better spent by spending money rather than
investing in themselves, their education and giving back, it is their
choice to make. There are many that do. They vote that way with
their pocket book.

Full disclosure:
Growing up in the computing industry, I started as an anti-M$ geek
from Bill Gates 'Open Letter to Hobbyists' days (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists ). That is not
a good reason not to use it if M$ based tools are the best for the
job, but that is where my attitude / perspective started and has only
been supported by M$ adversarial actions toward their customer base
ever since. Realistically, I use M$ products, mainly because my wife
(and her employer) has a warm and fuzzy about using them, and from the
'if mamma ain't happy, nobody is happy' camp, it isn't worth the
battle. Even if non-M$ is a better technical solution, IMHO. --
BTW, I have been using Linux since kernel 0.97, so I have stuck with
it for a while.

Post by Dave Cole

Post by andy pugh

Post by Jack Coats
There is an article in Digital Machinist, Vol 9 No 3, Fall 2014 with the title
"Migrating from Mach3 to LinuxCNC" by Thomas Allsup (page 24).

I wonder why anyone would want to?
By which I mean, if you have a working, paid for Mach3 installation
running a machine and making parts, why would you throw it all up in
the air to change to some different (and approximately equivalent)
software?

I would assume that he ran into some issues with Mach3 and decided to
move to LinuxCNC.
It is not difficult to find issues with Mach3 that are hard or
impossibile to resolve.
I was starting to feel bad for the Mach3 camp, then I saw that there are
two other articles in the magazine that are about Mach3.
Dave
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[craig]

Since I am considering migrating, I have some questions. I think these
would address most of the concers of a large percentage of hobby level
users.

1. Wat is the minimum reading needed to migrate a simple gantry, steper
controlled router (or mill) from Mach3 to LinuxCNC, for someone with a
very limited knowledge of Linux? A list would be very much
appreciated (which chapters/parts of which documents).

2. What elements/codes might need editing in existing g-code files?
What would you look for (scan for) in files to flag the possible need
for editing?

Comments from those who recently migrated would be useful as well as
from the more knowledgeable users.

Similar information would be useful for those converting a lathe.

Craig

[andy pugh]

Post by craig
1. Wat is the minimum reading needed to migrate a simple gantry, steper
controlled router (or mill) from Mach3 to LinuxCNC

That rather depends on how Mach3 is controlling the gantry.
Is this a gantry with a motor at each end? If so, how is homing
configured? One stepgen or two?

Post by craig
2. What elements/codes might need editing in existing g-code files?
What would you look for (scan for) in files to flag the possible need
for editing?

G-code files without any custom codes should run without modification.