Discussion:
[Emc-users] LinuxCNC documentation in russian
Viesturs Lācis
2012-12-13 18:35:54 UTC
Permalink
Hello!

Is there any chance that somebody might have translated LinuxCNC
documentation to russian language?
I am particularly looking for basic introductions, "Getting started
guide", because I am now installing a machine at client's site and
wanted to give the operator some reading to get familiar with
LinuxCNC, but the thing is that just like many people in my country,
his english skills are bad, but he is pretty fluent in russian.

I did find this one:
http://www.cnc-club.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=150
But I find Integrators' manual to be no good for a complete CNC beginner.
--
Viesturs

If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Sebastian Kuzminsky
2012-12-13 18:45:35 UTC
Permalink
Post by Viesturs Lācis
Is there any chance that somebody might have translated LinuxCNC
documentation to russian language?
We do not have an official Russian translation of our docs,
unfortunately, and I don't know of any "unofficial" translations
floating around. Patches are welcome!
--
Sebastian Kuzminsky
Jon Elson
2012-12-14 02:10:28 UTC
Permalink
Post by Sebastian Kuzminsky
Post by Viesturs Lācis
Is there any chance that somebody might have translated LinuxCNC
documentation to russian language?
We do not have an official Russian translation of our docs,
unfortunately, and I don't know of any "unofficial" translations
floating around. Patches are welcome!
Well, I shouldn't be offering his services without checking with him
first, but Igor Chudov is a happy LinuxCNC user, and I think he
is still fluent in Ruskiy. (Don't have Cyrillic on my keyboard.)

Jon
andy pugh
2012-12-13 19:10:05 UTC
Permalink
Post by Viesturs Lācis
Is there any chance that somebody might have translated LinuxCNC
documentation to russian language?
You don't fancy doing the Latvian translation then?

Actually, in all seriousness, translating the _software_ into Latvian
could give you a good position in your local market, and I think it is
just a case of creating a new translation file:
http://git.linuxcnc.org/gitweb?p=linuxcnc.git;a=tree;f=src/po;h=b8792851093add9da9cdae22f094c4875514efb0;hb=HEAD
--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Viesturs Lācis
2012-12-13 19:29:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by andy pugh
Post by Viesturs Lācis
Is there any chance that somebody might have translated LinuxCNC
documentation to russian language?
You don't fancy doing the Latvian translation then?
Actually, in all seriousness, translating the _software_ into Latvian
could give you a good position in your local market, and I think it is
http://git.linuxcnc.org/gitweb?p=linuxcnc.git;a=tree;f=src/po;h=b8792851093add9da9cdae22f094c4875514efb0;hb=HEAD
Thanks for the link, now I understand, what it takes to add another
language to LinuxCNC.
Just that there are almost 14K lines in russian translation file,
almost 16K lines in polish translation. Does not seem like a job for a
weekend to translate all those phrases in there, especially all the
error messages.
I will think about that as I totally agree - having a translation in
Latvian would be pretty good selling point, but just like majority of
us I have so many things more urgent to do...

But my initial question was about documentation so that I could give
the guy something to read and then he would ask me questions rather
than I try to figure out, what is the best way to start explaining
things.
--
Viesturs

If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Sebastian Kuzminsky
2012-12-13 19:38:50 UTC
Permalink
Post by Viesturs Lācis
Post by andy pugh
http://git.linuxcnc.org/gitweb?p=linuxcnc.git;a=tree;f=src/po;h=b8792851093add9da9cdae22f094c4875514efb0;hb=HEAD
Thanks for the link, now I understand, what it takes to add another
language to LinuxCNC.
Just that there are almost 14K lines in russian translation file,
almost 16K lines in polish translation. Does not seem like a job for a
weekend to translate all those phrases in there, especially all the
error messages.
Translating LinuxCNC is definitely not a weekend project. It's an
ongoing effort to keep the translation up-to-date, LinuxCNC is a moving
target as the user-visible messages and the English documentation changes.

Of our four official translations, only French is maintained at all, and
only because Francis Tisserant works hard to keep it so. Thanks tissf!

The other translations (German, Polish, and Spanish) are all horribly
out of date. :-(
--
Sebastian Kuzminsky
Viesturs Lācis
2012-12-13 19:48:04 UTC
Permalink
Post by Sebastian Kuzminsky
Translating LinuxCNC is definitely not a weekend project. It's an
ongoing effort to keep the translation up-to-date, LinuxCNC is a moving
target as the user-visible messages and the English documentation changes.
BTW can I change the language for already installed LinuxCNC?
--
Viesturs

If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
John Thornton
2012-12-13 22:11:30 UTC
Permalink
Actually there is no translated docs in German or Polish and only a few
chapters have been translated to Spanish.
Post by Sebastian Kuzminsky
Post by Viesturs Lācis
Post by andy pugh
http://git.linuxcnc.org/gitweb?p=linuxcnc.git;a=tree;f=src/po;h=b8792851093add9da9cdae22f094c4875514efb0;hb=HEAD
Thanks for the link, now I understand, what it takes to add another
language to LinuxCNC.
Just that there are almost 14K lines in russian translation file,
almost 16K lines in polish translation. Does not seem like a job for a
weekend to translate all those phrases in there, especially all the
error messages.
Translating LinuxCNC is definitely not a weekend project. It's an
ongoing effort to keep the translation up-to-date, LinuxCNC is a moving
target as the user-visible messages and the English documentation changes.
Of our four official translations, only French is maintained at all, and
only because Francis Tisserant works hard to keep it so. Thanks tissf!
The other translations (German, Polish, and Spanish) are all horribly
out of date. :-(
Sebastian Kuzminsky
2012-12-13 22:19:26 UTC
Permalink
Post by John Thornton
Actually there is no translated docs in German or Polish and only a few
chapters have been translated to Spanish.
Has nothing at all been translated to German and Polish?! If so we
should drop them!
--
Sebastian Kuzminsky
John Thornton
2012-12-14 11:50:49 UTC
Permalink
That is my thoughts exactly, why clutter up the repo with untranslated
docs. All the master docs and the html indexes use the English docs
unless it is a real translated chapter in the case of the Spanish docs.
Post by Sebastian Kuzminsky
Post by John Thornton
Actually there is no translated docs in German or Polish and only a few
chapters have been translated to Spanish.
Has nothing at all been translated to German and Polish?! If so we
should drop them!
andy pugh
2012-12-14 11:59:11 UTC
Permalink
Post by John Thornton
That is my thoughts exactly, why clutter up the repo with untranslated
docs
I wonder if it would make sense to feed the documents through an
auto-translator?
It wouldn't be a clean translation, but it might be enough for a
German/Polish reader to feel he urge to clean up.
--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
andy pugh
2012-12-14 12:01:29 UTC
Permalink
Post by andy pugh
I wonder if it would make sense to feed the documents through an
auto-translator?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duolingo Perhaps?

http://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_collaboration.html
--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
John Thornton
2012-12-14 12:07:19 UTC
Permalink
You would have to do that paragraph by paragraph making sure not to
translate links... There was an attempt to do this in the past and the
comment I received was the translation was pure rubbish. The problem
seems to be the translators don't speak geek!
Post by andy pugh
Post by John Thornton
That is my thoughts exactly, why clutter up the repo with untranslated
docs
I wonder if it would make sense to feed the documents through an
auto-translator?
It wouldn't be a clean translation, but it might be enough for a
German/Polish reader to feel he urge to clean up.
Chris Radek
2012-12-14 15:00:59 UTC
Permalink
Post by andy pugh
I wonder if it would make sense to feed the documents through an
auto-translator?
One of our primary output formats is html, and the up-to-date English
docs are on www.linuxcnc.org. If any user wants to read these through
the google translator (or any other), that's really easy. For
instance, see

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=es&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxcnc.org%2Fdocs%2Fhtml%2Fgcode.html

(that file is handwritten html), or

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=es&u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxcnc.org%2Fdocs%2Fhtml%2Fgui%2Faxis.html

(this one is asciidoc)

Also, a human translator who finds an autotranslation a useful
starting point is free to do that at any time. For us to do it ahead
of time, before we even have a human translator who wants to work on
that language, just causes us headaches: we have to maintain the lousy
autotranslation which will become out of date as the English files
change, and we don't benefit from ongoing improvements in the web
infrastructure that does autotranslation. (Google told me while I
was viewing these that Chrome has auto translation built in and I
should try it...)

Chris
Peter Blodow
2012-12-14 19:12:08 UTC
Permalink
Gentlemen,
let me explain why this translation business is so complicated. I have
translated novels from English to German years ago (for earning money)
and l know what I'm talking about. I have also translated a couple
hundred sentences of EMC code some months ago (and never seen any of
them appear in donwloadable software).

First of all, forget all that computer translating business. What comes
out of these programs is barely understandable, and only if you already
know what the English text meant in the first place. Most of the times
automatic translations are simply ridiculous. You can test this for
yourselves by re-translating the translated nonsense into English.

Secondly, LinuxCNC documentation are not crime stories or love novels.
Every single word of the docs may have a very specific meaning and may
be of importance, which is not true with ordinary prose. This especially
true when translating text that appears in screen forms, man pages or
error messages. This means that as a translator you must first define an
exact vocabulary where every english word is correlated to one and only
one counterpart. This is sometimes very difficult because English words
may be ambigous. Often it happens that for the sake of exactness you
must correct sloppy definitions in the English text or find out what the
author really wanted to express before you write down the first
sentence. This all makes technical translations rather tedious. There is
a good reason why large companies, selling consumer goods to foreign
countries, have a special staff for creating instruction sheets for
these languages.

Thirdly, now speaking mainly for Germany, everybody learns English at
school, even in elementary school. German and English are of the same
origin and have somewhat similar structure and wording. This makes it
easy for Germans to learn English, easier than, say, Turkish (which is
the second most spoken language in Germany). English has become the
language of electronics, computing and the internet as well as of the
song and music business. It has become a widely known language here and
so there is little need for translation of specific documentation into
German. This is not true, however, for program text and error messages.

Fourth, LinuxCNC is developing rapidly. Who can keep up translating all
the docs, knowing that not even the English versions are completely up
to date? It would be a Sisyphos task and this discourages people, me for
instance. There are chances that my translation is not even read once
before it has to be replaced.

Fifth, considering the fact that LinuxCNC has apparently turned into a
widely commercially used system in the US (I can tell from the mail
group threads) which cannot work in Germany, there are not many serious
users hereabouts. I would doubt that there are any others than
hobbyists. It's unlikely that one of these few will take the effort and
translate manuals - he'd rather stick with the English text and put his
efforts on getting LinuxCNC to run.

Greetings from white Germany

Peter
Post by Chris Radek
Post by andy pugh
I wonder if it would make sense to feed the documents through an
auto-translator?
One of our primary output formats is html, and the up-to-date English
docs are on www.linuxcnc.org. If any user wants to read these through
the google translator (or any other), that's really easy. For
instance, see
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=es&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxcnc.org%2Fdocs%2Fhtml%2Fgcode.html
(that file is handwritten html), or
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=es&u=http%3A%2F%2Flinuxcnc.org%2Fdocs%2Fhtml%2Fgui%2Faxis.html
(this one is asciidoc)
Also, a human translator who finds an autotranslation a useful
starting point is free to do that at any time. For us to do it ahead
of time, before we even have a human translator who wants to work on
that language, just causes us headaches: we have to maintain the lousy
autotranslation which will become out of date as the English files
change, and we don't benefit from ongoing improvements in the web
infrastructure that does autotranslation. (Google told me while I
was viewing these that Chrome has auto translation built in and I
should try it...)
Chris
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Przemek Klosowski
2012-12-14 21:06:08 UTC
Permalink
On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 2:12 PM, Peter Blodow <***@dreki.de> wrote:

Fifth, considering the fact that LinuxCNC has apparently turned into a
Post by Peter Blodow
widely commercially used system in the US (I can tell from the mail
group threads) which cannot work in Germany, there are not many serious
users hereabouts. I would doubt that there are any others than
hobbyists.
Curious---why is that? inherent conservative German nature, or legal
issues?

By the way, I used Google Translate for a number of technical pages in
Chinese/Japanese and I was impressed how useful and understandable they
were, compared to my low expectations. Perhaps they are so good because
that's where Google spends their efforts, or maybe 'to-English' translation
is easier.

Google translation apparently is based on statistic algorithms rather than
on language comprehension---they have a body of known-good translations and
base new ones on piecewise matches, or something like that. That would
explain why quality depends on a particular from-to pair.
Peter Blodow
2012-12-15 09:56:35 UTC
Permalink
Przemek,
when I want to build (or also keep) up a business I have to be reliable
for the customers and grant continuity for my products. Therefore, I
have to demand just the same from my suppliers. I will have to put a lot
of money into my business, in most cases from loans, and have to keep
the risk of loss as low as possible. I will need banks and insurances
which want to calculate the risk of lending money to me and at which
cost. All this calls for professional solutions, as well in machinery
as in computer hard- and software, be they ingeniuous, modern, inventive
or not, they have to be reliable and calculable in the first place. A
large company with an international name gives me more of this security
than the best and most ingenious free product. This is why Linux can't
break though on the professional office market, and this is why LinuxCNC
can't make it on our professional production market. A lot simplified,
as the saying goes "if it costs nothing, it's worth nothing".

Another thing is that there are legal regulations to be licenced and
authorized to run a commercial machine shop. To be allowed open up a
production of any kind you have to have a certain degree ("Meister" in
German) from the Chamber of Crafts and Industry, preceded by a three
years apprenticeship with final exam, several years of professional
experience and a Meister school degree exam in the end. During all this
time, people get acquainted with professional equipment and want to rely
on it in their own business later on. Large companies, as is
understandable, do a lot of advertizing for these people in order to
make them stay with their equipment later when they are on their own. I
have experienced myself that shop workers insisted of buying a specific
machine without which they would refuse to grant the quality of the
products they were making.

So, there is your German "conservativism". Our dual educational system
of schools and apprenticeship with its pursuit of quality and continuity
has made Germany a blooming economy among a lot of declining countries
all around in Europe, and this only a few decades after a war that had
destroyed three quarters of all buildings, virtually all means of
production and millions of men to run this production.

Peter
Post by Peter Blodow
Fifth, considering the fact that LinuxCNC has apparently turned into a
Post by Peter Blodow
widely commercially used system in the US (I can tell from the mail
group threads) which cannot work in Germany, there are not many serious
users hereabouts. I would doubt that there are any others than
hobbyists.
Curious---why is that? inherent conservative German nature, or legal
issues?
By the way, I used Google Translate for a number of technical pages in
Chinese/Japanese and I was impressed how useful and understandable they
were, compared to my low expectations. Perhaps they are so good because
that's where Google spends their efforts, or maybe 'to-English' translation
is easier.
Google translation apparently is based on statistic algorithms rather than
on language comprehension---they have a body of known-good translations and
base new ones on piecewise matches, or something like that. That would
explain why quality depends on a particular from-to pair.
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Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers
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Przemek Klosowski
2012-12-15 19:01:33 UTC
Permalink
Peter,

when I want to build (or also keep) up a business I have to be reliable
Post by Peter Blodow
for the customers and grant continuity for my products. Therefore, I
have to demand just the same from my suppliers. I will have to put a lot
of money into my business, in most cases from loans, and have to keep
the risk of loss as low as possible. I will need banks and insurances
which want to calculate the risk of lending money to me and at which
cost. All this calls for professional solutions, as well in machinery
as in computer hard- and software, be they ingeniuous, modern, inventive
or not, they have to be reliable and calculable in the first place. A
large company with an international name gives me more of this security
than the best and most ingenious free product. This is why Linux can't
break though on the professional office market, and this is why LinuxCNC
can't make it on our professional production market. A lot simplified,
as the saying goes "if it costs nothing, it's worth nothing".
I have nothing but respect for German reliability---but I live in the US
which may have originated the 'fail fast' attitude that, on the whole, is
quite successful. I was raised in the cultural meme of a failed businessman
who would shoot himself in the head out of shame, so it was an eye opener
for me to learn that an average successful entrepreneur in the US failed
and went bankrupt several times before achieving success. We probably pay
for that with less stable economy---when it's cranking it's really
productive, but it's susceptible to bubbles and subsequent recessions.

I think the times are changing and for better or worse the 'fail fast'
model is gaining popularity around the world. Specifically about Linux,
when I look around me I see that all my phones, my cable modem, half of my
computers, and even my TV and DVD player all run Linux. It's an interesting
dynamic---of course all those manufacturers care about stability and
quality, so I imagine that they have internal teams that assure that it
will work out. There's nothing that would prevent a large industrial
equipment manufacturer from doing the same to adopt LinuxCNC. I think it's
bound to happen when the price pressures arise and force people to look at
the component costs---I noticed we have Chinese participants on this list,
who sounded like they are more than hobbyists.

As an aside, is there a market for second-hand machinery in Germany? a lot
of the motivation for LinuxCNC is because people get depreciated machines
from original owners, and they are either broken, or too expensive to
maintain in the original configuration, so LCNC retrofit makes a lot of
sense. I can see how this might be not a thing to do in Germany--would you
agree?
Peter Blodow
2012-12-16 14:12:40 UTC
Permalink
Hello Przemek,

yeah, you are right. The world is changing to more commerce, less
character rapidly. I think this started when the iron curtain fell -
strangely enough, the communist system seems to have been the last part
on manhood to keep up ethics and moral standards. I'm not going for more
and more money since I have been lying on that cool stainless steel
plate in the hospital several times, watching tmy heart impulses dwindle
away on the monitor and awaiting the narcotics syringe and not knowing
what I would be seening next - the world I was used to or St. Peter.
This was OT.

Of course, Linux is in every screwdriver nowadays, but not visible to
the user or customer, i.e., without a UI. It does its work as a stable
operating system without failure. So don't get me wrong, I was using
Unix on work stations as an OS long before the first PC was sold ( I
used to be very familiar with it but all this was overrridden by the
daily office use of Windows products). I learned that with a complicated
system (CATIA) in production, you have to have a reliable software
partner, beginning with system installation and update work and ending
with emergency calls.

If there were software houses offering this service I think LinuxCNC had
a big chance on the market. But we have been discussing this commercial
aspect a while ago in this mail group. It also means that there would
have to be a rigid publication management for releases and their timing.
This all would completely destroy what I like with LinuxCNC. Of what I
heard, Ubuntu, being the base of it, is already turning more commercial
at this time so we can just wait until we need another OS - just what I
meant by "reliabilty and continuity".

You see, I had a Siemens Facility Management system running in my
company for more than 25 years with no trouble other than occasional
errors or part failures. Even the central hard disk was junked later on
without ever having failed during all those years. They even kept up the
ancient OS (BS 1000, the predecessor of BS 2000) although nobody in the
world knew about it any more - they taught their personell only for us
and for the Moscow airport, the only customers left I knew of. That's
continuity! In the end we switched to another system, much more user
friendly, and I can only hope that the company that is selling the new
system will keep on going for a long time.

Of course there is a used machinery market in Germany. But for one,
there is the tax aspect: you can detract more from your tax if you buy
more expensive machines. This is dealt this way by the federal
government in order to encourage investments in new equipment. Then, new
machines are better, have less failures and out times, need less
maintenance and service, are more user friendly, need fewer operators
and can be run by less experienced operators. Thus, they are cheaper to
run. So, the used machine market is a low price market. This way it was
easy for me to buy machinery for my hobby workshop from my allowance
money :-)).

For the mechanical workshop of my former company, of course, I bought a
5-axis Deckel-Gildemeister CNC mill with all the tricks of the trade. It
has a shrink tool holder with modern tools and works so unbelievably
fast that everyone expects the tools to break or at least to become dull
after a few seconds. The spindle turns up to 20 000 rpm in stainless
steel, so all the experienced workers shook their heads when they saw
this for the first time. But aside from the speed, the programming
feature enables the designers to devise parts which were not even
thinkable before, e.g. a cell sieve with 500 by 500 holes of 0.3 mm
diameter made from stainless steel.

When the iron curtain fell, all the used machine dealers in West Germany
had filled their storage with used machines, partly real wrecks,
expecting the easterners to buy all this junk when the border was
opened, and hoping for a great profit. However, East Germany got support
from the federal government (i.e., our tax money) and used the chance to
make a completely new beginning, investing only in brand new machines,
so in the end it came out that they were better equipped than West
Germany after all (which is also true with the roads over there compared
with ours). At the dealers, they had stacked lathes and mills on top of
each other - in fact, I picked my machine sitting in a cradle hovering
on the crane high above a huge heap of used lathes. I used the chance
and bought my lathe really cheap this way. Many dealers went bancrupt at
this time, just as mine did. When I came back to his place after about
half a year in search of more change gear wheels for the lathe even the
building was gone.

So, I had to make my own gears using my home brew software on my home
brew CNC mill. This is what inspired me later to take up dealing with
LinuxCNC. Anyway, to answer your question: retrofitting machines is good
for home and hobby use, not on an industrial base. Don't get me wrong,
I'm very in favour of repairing things (which I am doing constantly
aroud the house). I have been visiting a lot of used dealers, junk
yards and flea markets (and also Ebay) to complete my shop equipment. At
any rate, with a shop full of old equipment you won't win many public
calls for tender (or what may be the correct term for that), because in
many cases the shops inventory will be considered for the decision who
gets the contract. I once had a case that an engeneering company got a
million order because they had a color DIN A3 laser printer while others
didn't.

I think that the US government would do a good thing encouraging its
country's infrastructure to be improved, which is also true with
electrical, water and other energy supply, as well as traffic and
renewable energy systems. Squeezing the last drops of oil out of the
some greasy rocks under ground is the wrong way to compete with future's
demands.

Peter
Post by Przemek Klosowski
Peter,
I have nothing but respect for German reliability---but I live in the US
which may have originated the 'fail fast' attitude that, on the whole, is
quite successful. I was raised in the cultural meme of a failed businessman
who would shoot himself in the head out of shame, so it was an eye opener
for me to learn that an average successful entrepreneur in the US failed
and went bankrupt several times before achieving success. We probably pay
for that with less stable economy---when it's cranking it's really
productive, but it's susceptible to bubbles and subsequent recessions.
I think the times are changing and for better or worse the 'fail fast'
model is gaining popularity around the world. Specifically about Linux,
when I look around me I see that all my phones, my cable modem, half of my
computers, and even my TV and DVD player all run Linux. It's an interesting
dynamic---of course all those manufacturers care about stability and
quality, so I imagine that they have internal teams that assure that it
will work out. There's nothing that would prevent a large industrial
equipment manufacturer from doing the same to adopt LinuxCNC. I think it's
bound to happen when the price pressures arise and force people to look at
the component costs---I noticed we have Chinese participants on this list,
who sounded like they are more than hobbyists.
As an aside, is there a market for second-hand machinery in Germany? a lot
of the motivation for LinuxCNC is because people get depreciated machines
from original owners, and they are either broken, or too expensive to
maintain in the original configuration, so LCNC retrofit makes a lot of
sense. I can see how this might be not a thing to do in Germany--would you
agree?
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Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services
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andy pugh
2012-12-15 19:14:54 UTC
Permalink
Post by Peter Blodow
when I want to build (or also keep) up a business I have to be reliable
for the customers and grant continuity for my products.
There is an argument that because _any_ programmer can
support/fix/modify LinuxCNC that it is more supportable in the long
term.

If Fanuc closed down, how would Fanuc users get software fixes?

I am not sure that the argument is 100% valid, though.
--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Jon Elson
2012-12-15 20:46:58 UTC
Permalink
Post by andy pugh
Post by Peter Blodow
when I want to build (or also keep) up a business I have to be reliable
for the customers and grant continuity for my products.
There is an argument that because _any_ programmer can
support/fix/modify LinuxCNC that it is more supportable in the long
term.
If Fanuc closed down, how would Fanuc users get software fixes?
They just did, didn't they? I suspect a lot of older gear is now only
supported by
techs working independently, with parts they can get from the vultures.
Of course,
that isn't all that different from the support available for older gear
before the
dis-merger.

Jon
cogoman
2012-12-15 20:55:21 UTC
Permalink
Post by Peter Blodow
when I want to build (or also keep) up a business I have to be reliable
Post by Peter Blodow
for the customers and grant continuity for my products.
There is an argument that because_any_ programmer can
support/fix/modify LinuxCNC that it is more supportable in the long
term.
If Fanuc closed down, how would Fanuc users get software fixes?
I am not sure that the argument is 100% valid, though.
The previous argument follows the logic of corporate culture that used
to say "Nobody ever lost their job buying IBM." Until IBM had a bad
business decision with their spec on CMI hard drives that spawned things
like CMI reef, a bunch of CMI hard drives dropped in the bay off Boca
Raton Florida. The company selling replacement drives advertised it's
not "IF" your hard drive will die, it's "WHEN" your hard drive dies.
Suddenly options other than IBM started to make sense.
Ben Potter
2012-12-15 21:23:39 UTC
Permalink
-----Original Message-----
Sent: 15 December 2012 20:55
To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)
Subject: Re: [Emc-users] LinuxCNC documentation in russian
I work with a CNC machine that uses an old Bandit controller. Even
though it doesn't do any heavy lifting (all 2d work), sometimes we
overflow the 512 program commands allowed (X1. Y2. counts as 2). I
think that an old machine with reliable axes and spindle would be much
more useable with LinuxCNC than with a program limit of 512 commands!
I've got a machine with much the same limit (1200 line) - which is somewhat
frustrating at times. I couldn't figure out a way to (easily and cheaply)
convert it over to linuxcnc without replacing the existing drives and
resolvers - which made it a rather more time consuming and expensive task
than I was willing to undertake. Oddly enough, there was a post from Tim
James earlier today about a conversion chip which looks like it may allow me
to use the original resolvers - bringing the pain of conversion down to
tolerable levels. The other option would be to upgrade the controller to a
TNC 151 or 155 - but they seem to be rather rare these days.
Right though, that you would want to select a motherboard that's
reliable. Trying 2 MBs to get 1 good one wouldn't be all that
expensive for a production environment.
I think this depends on the value of labour more than anything - either you
have a low (relative) labour cost, in which case it's worth testing multiple
boards, changing caps, etc (or as used to be done, custom fitting bearings,
hand scraping, ...) or you have a high labour cost, in which case it's worth
spending more money on a highly reliable board in the first place
(universally matched precision bearings, ground ways).

I'm a lot more willing to spend time repairing or upgrading components for
my hobby than I am for my day job. Fixing 'dead' motherboards by replacing
the failed caps used to be a darn sight cheaper than buying a new machine -
not so sure it is now.
andy pugh
2012-12-15 21:56:29 UTC
Permalink
Post by Ben Potter
I've got a machine with much the same limit (1200 line) - which is somewhat
frustrating at times. I couldn't figure out a way to (easily and cheaply)
convert it over to linuxcnc without replacing the existing drives and
resolvers
I have a Mesa 7i49 (I bought it with actual money) and it works brilliantly.
I am running a set of 3 Lenze servos with a combination of the 7i49,
the LinuxCNC "bldc" component and Mesa 8i20 drives.
The 7i49 has 6 resolver inputs and 6 analogue (+10v to -10V) outputs.
I am not using the outputs, which offends my sensibilities slightly. I
might add a bunch of analogue voltmeters to indicate "stuff" just to
find a use for them.

Pico have an alternative board that converts Resolvers into quadrature pulses.

I made an Arduino-based variant on the theme.
http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ResolverToQuadratureConverter
You will note that I bought a 7i49.

I am fairly sure that I don't actually need the "bldc" component in my
setup. All it is doing is putting in a phase difference between the
resolver and the drive. I suspect that I could get the same effect by
swapping the motor wires and/or the resolver wires. The 7i49 provides
rotor position straight to HAL with 24 bits of precision. (and about
16 bits of accuracy)
--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Mark Wendt
2012-12-16 12:00:12 UTC
Permalink
On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 4:56 PM, andy pugh <***@gmail.com> wrote:

<snippage>
Post by andy pugh
I am not using the outputs, which offends my sensibilities slightly.
Thanks Andy. You owe me a new keyboard for that one... ;-)

Made my morning!
Post by andy pugh
--
atp
Mark
dave
2012-12-15 23:01:08 UTC
Permalink
Post by Ben Potter
-----Original Message-----
Sent: 15 December 2012 20:55
To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)
Subject: Re: [Emc-users] LinuxCNC documentation in russian
I work with a CNC machine that uses an old Bandit controller. Even
though it doesn't do any heavy lifting (all 2d work), sometimes we
overflow the 512 program commands allowed (X1. Y2. counts as 2). I
think that an old machine with reliable axes and spindle would be much
more useable with LinuxCNC than with a program limit of 512 commands!
I've got a machine with much the same limit (1200 line) - which is somewhat
frustrating at times. I couldn't figure out a way to (easily and cheaply)
convert it over to linuxcnc without replacing the existing drives and
resolvers - which made it a rather more time consuming and expensive task
than I was willing to undertake. Oddly enough, there was a post from Tim
James earlier today about a conversion chip which looks like it may allow me
to use the original resolvers - bringing the pain of conversion down to
tolerable levels. The other option would be to upgrade the controller to a
TNC 151 or 155 - but they seem to be rather rare these days.
http://pico-systems.com/resolver.html

It appears to take one of these for each resolver so it is not cheap.
If you can get encoders that will fit into the available space that
might be the cheaper way to go.

Dave
Post by Ben Potter
Right though, that you would want to select a motherboard that's
reliable. Trying 2 MBs to get 1 good one wouldn't be all that
expensive for a production environment.
I think this depends on the value of labour more than anything - either you
have a low (relative) labour cost, in which case it's worth testing multiple
boards, changing caps, etc (or as used to be done, custom fitting bearings,
hand scraping, ...) or you have a high labour cost, in which case it's worth
spending more money on a highly reliable board in the first place
(universally matched precision bearings, ground ways).
I'm a lot more willing to spend time repairing or upgrading components for
my hobby than I am for my day job. Fixing 'dead' motherboards by replacing
the failed caps used to be a darn sight cheaper than buying a new machine -
not so sure it is now.
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Jon Elson
2012-12-16 04:34:19 UTC
Permalink
Post by Ben Potter
Oddly enough, there was a post from Tim
James earlier today about a conversion chip which looks like it may allow me
to use the original resolvers - bringing the pain of conversion down to
tolerable levels.
I've been making resolver to quadrature converters for several years, as
a stand-alone
product. Mesa also has a plug-in board for their systems to use
resolver input.
See
<http://pico-systems.com/osc2.5/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=2&products_id=32>

Jon
cogoman
2012-12-16 06:39:26 UTC
Permalink
Post by Ben Potter
I've got a machine with much the same limit (1200 line) - which is somewhat
frustrating at times. I couldn't figure out a way to (easily and cheaply)
convert it over to linuxcnc without replacing the existing drives and
resolvers - which made it a rather more time consuming and expensive task
than I was willing to undertake. Oddly enough, there was a post from Tim
James earlier today about a conversion chip which looks like it may allow me
to use the original resolvers - bringing the pain of conversion down to
tolerable levels. The other option would be to upgrade the controller to a
TNC 151 or 155 - but they seem to be rather rare these days.
One option on the wiki (but well hidden) is a 3 channel resolver to
quadrature converter using an arduino and a power op-amp. It uses a
2KHz excitation frequency, while the Pico Systems board can use up to
10KHz. The Pico board goes up to 60000RPM, while the arduino probably
can't go near that. Still if it can handle 6000 RPM that would be
pretty good. The Pico board gives 4096 counts per revolution versus 1024
for the arduino. The aduino can serve 3 channels at one time. If the
new 32 bit arm arduino can do the same sort of thing, it should be able
to keep up with a 10KHz excitation signal, but that would require a
significant amount of dev time.
Here is a link to the wiki entry.

http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ResolverToQuadratureConverter

I found it by searching yahoo with:

site:linuxcnc.org arduino

and then looking for resolver to quadrature converter.

If you decide to try this, you might try breadboarding the circuit
using the ardweeny from the makershed

http://www.makershed.com/product_p/mksb012.htm

and the lm272, but you would probably save in the long run by just
building it the way the wiki page shows.

***** thanks Andy for the documentation on this! *****


As to the motherboards, I was just referring to how a motherboard
that many find works extremely well, sometimes doesn't work well for
another. I would expect a reasonable choice of motherboards with 2
different models should be guaranteed to get one that will work well for
LinuxCNC.
I've heard of Monday and Friday cars. I wonder if there are Monday
and Friday electronics. I was looking at some android cell phones that
my wife and I are getting, and when I sorted the comments by date, the
people who commented Dec 10 of this year seemed to have phones that
locked up often. Going back just 3 days from that and everybody seems
to be gushing about how good they are. I hope we don't get Monday or
Friday phones!
dave
2012-12-16 16:42:23 UTC
Permalink
Post by cogoman
Post by Ben Potter
I've got a machine with much the same limit (1200 line) - which is somewhat
frustrating at times. I couldn't figure out a way to (easily and cheaply)
convert it over to linuxcnc without replacing the existing drives and
resolvers - which made it a rather more time consuming and expensive task
than I was willing to undertake. Oddly enough, there was a post from Tim
James earlier today about a conversion chip which looks like it may allow me
to use the original resolvers - bringing the pain of conversion down to
tolerable levels. The other option would be to upgrade the controller to a
TNC 151 or 155 - but they seem to be rather rare these days.
One option on the wiki (but well hidden) is a 3 channel resolver to
quadrature converter using an arduino and a power op-amp. It uses a
2KHz excitation frequency, while the Pico Systems board can use up to
10KHz. The Pico board goes up to 60000RPM, while the arduino probably
can't go near that. Still if it can handle 6000 RPM that would be
pretty good. The Pico board gives 4096 counts per revolution versus 1024
for the arduino. The aduino can serve 3 channels at one time. If the
new 32 bit arm arduino can do the same sort of thing, it should be able
to keep up with a 10KHz excitation signal, but that would require a
significant amount of dev time.
Here is a link to the wiki entry.
http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ResolverToQuadratureConverter
Interesting idea and gives you three channels. However there is another
issue here. Basic resolution adequate for servo control. The good news
is that the resolver is probably geared to the servo shaft maybe a 3:1.
So, making further assumptions.... 2:1 gearing to the ballscrew and 4
tpi ballscrew gives 1024 * 3 * 2 * 4 cpi. = ~25000 cpi. If true that is
not bad. I've worked with systems as low a ~5000 cpi and they were a bit
iffy on control. Realize that 5000 cpi will probably yield control to
sightly better than 0.001" which is OK for most hobby machines. Anything
better is pure gravy. In brief having lots of counts makes the pid
happy. Hang in there. (enough rambling for one morning).

Dave
Post by cogoman
site:linuxcnc.org arduino
and then looking for resolver to quadrature converter.
If you decide to try this, you might try breadboarding the circuit
using the ardweeny from the makershed
http://www.makershed.com/product_p/mksb012.htm
and the lm272, but you would probably save in the long run by just
building it the way the wiki page shows.
***** thanks Andy for the documentation on this! *****
As to the motherboards, I was just referring to how a motherboard
that many find works extremely well, sometimes doesn't work well for
another. I would expect a reasonable choice of motherboards with 2
different models should be guaranteed to get one that will work well for
LinuxCNC.
I've heard of Monday and Friday cars. I wonder if there are Monday
and Friday electronics. I was looking at some android cell phones that
my wife and I are getting, and when I sorted the comments by date, the
people who commented Dec 10 of this year seemed to have phones that
locked up often. Going back just 3 days from that and everybody seems
to be gushing about how good they are. I hope we don't get Monday or
Friday phones!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support
Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services
Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers
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andy pugh
2012-12-16 16:50:59 UTC
Permalink
Post by dave
Post by andy pugh
http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ResolverToQuadratureConverter
Interesting idea and gives you three channels.
I will just point out again that I am no longer trying to use this.
There a a number of reasons, not all related to functionality, such as
me losing the source code for the UART comp I decided to use instead
of using quadrature counting.
Then I found that my excitation signal had gone wrong (possibly one of
the caps around the filter) and I decided to stop fiddling with it and
use the Mesa board. Which I don't regret.
--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Rafael Skodlar
2012-12-15 20:07:46 UTC
Permalink
Hi Peter,
Post by Peter Blodow
Przemek,
when I want to build (or also keep) up a business I have to be reliable
for the customers and grant continuity for my products. Therefore, I
have to demand just the same from my suppliers. I will have to put a lot
of money into my business, in most cases from loans, and have to keep
the risk of loss as low as possible. I will need banks and insurances
which want to calculate the risk of lending money to me and at which
cost. All this calls for professional solutions, as well in machinery
as in computer hard- and software, be they ingeniuous, modern, inventive
or not, they have to be reliable and calculable in the first place. A
large company with an international name gives me more of this security
than the best and most ingenious free product. This is why Linux can't
break though on the professional office market, and this is why LinuxCNC
can't make it on our professional production market. A lot simplified,
as the saying goes "if it costs nothing, it's worth nothing".
That's not true about Linux. My career depends on companies using Linux.
It's professional software that makes (Internet) world go around and
Linux plays a huge role in this. Virtualization would not happen without
need to run multiple operating systems on the same hardware at the same
time for example. Whole new innovations came out of that, supercomputing
in "cheap hardware", "cloud computing", better HW utilization, etc.

Here it doesn't matter how many university degrees you have as long as
you know how to make systems run. Many of us simply learn on the job to
become productive Linux Meisters.
Post by Peter Blodow
Another thing is that there are legal regulations to be licenced and
authorized to run a commercial machine shop. To be allowed open up a
production of any kind you have to have a certain degree ("Meister" in
German) from the Chamber of Crafts and Industry, preceded by a three
years apprenticeship with final exam, several years of professional
experience and a Meister school degree exam in the end. During all this
Not long ago, public TV had an interesting program about that German
apprenticeship system in practically every kind of business or trade,
from chimney sweeper, to butcher, pastry maker, etc. Impressive indeed.

Traditional trades do evolve into highly specialized fields in the
industry. Some is due to regulations as a reaction to accidents or
disasters. Other is simply a tradition or to protect the "union" which
prevents innovation in many cases. Meister wants to keep doing it the
old way, while there might be a better way.

Countries without industrial tradition make poor quality products. We
(regretfully) end up buying cheap machines from China instead of quality
from elsewhere. My small lathe/mill is an example of that. It's such a
sloppy work and you can't improve it. Chinese !CRAP! for 1/3rd of what a
German made would cost. Granted, it's only for a hobby; no way to make a
living with it.

In the US you can start almost any kind of business regardless of your
profession. If you don't know how to do things you try a few times until
it works, hire somebody to make it work, or outsource to other
businesses. Example is emerging private space industry. I know people
who used to work in computer industry, made some money, and decided to
go build rockets. They are successful.

Some use KickStarter to start new things or fill the need:
http://joshondesign.com/2012/09/17/innovator_terencetam

And when things go bad, we have lawyers that line up to "take care of
the problem" ;-)
Post by Peter Blodow
time, people get acquainted with professional equipment and want to rely
on it in their own business later on. Large companies, as is
understandable, do a lot of advertizing for these people in order to
make them stay with their equipment later when they are on their own. I
have experienced myself that shop workers insisted of buying a specific
machine without which they would refuse to grant the quality of the
products they were making.
So, there is your German "conservativism". Our dual educational system
of schools and apprenticeship with its pursuit of quality and continuity
has made Germany a blooming economy among a lot of declining countries
that's true, however, it would not be possible to keep going on it's
own. Other countries buy goods from Germany or do labor intensive work
for German companies, sometimes on borrowed money and that made things
go ugly for a number of EU members when the economy went south.
Post by Peter Blodow
all around in Europe, and this only a few decades after a war that had
destroyed three quarters of all buildings, virtually all means of
production and millions of men to run this production.
Peter
Well, that would not happen without help from the USA to rebuild West
Germany after the war. At least the rate of reconstruction would be much
slower for whole EU. Remember that huge number of men were killed in the
war and had to be replaced with "imports". If US used the same kind of
regime as the Soviets, you would not see Mercedes and BMW on the streets
of EU and much less in Asia these days. It was loans and access to
American market that made western EU recover so fast.

One thing that Americans are terribly conservative about is standards.
They will not adopt metric system, not even at the gun point. Part of
that is due to conservative unions that want to keep doing the same
thing over and over. We could turn our economy around simply with
mandatory conversion to metric system.
--
Rafael
andy pugh
2012-12-15 20:57:09 UTC
Permalink
Post by Rafael Skodlar
One thing that Americans are terribly conservative about is standards.
They will not adopt metric system, not even at the gun point.
Not even using a 9mm?
--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Rafael Skodlar
2012-12-15 21:27:14 UTC
Permalink
Post by andy pugh
Post by Rafael Skodlar
One thing that Americans are terribly conservative about is standards.
They will not adopt metric system, not even at the gun point.
Not even using a 9mm?
they opt for .45 since 1800's. BTW, forgot a disclaimer in previous
message. I tried everything else but a gun to make them adopt metric system.

Back to documentation. I too was wondering about translating sections of
open source software in general. It all depends on where one needs to
make changes. Messing with source code is not good approach as that can
break it. On the other hand, if the text for UI comes from separate
files it would be relatively easy to make translations. There are
limitations of course, like GUI space for number of characters, fonts,
icons, etc. but that too should not be too difficult to manage IMO.

It's my belief that LCNC would be easier to adopt around the world if
the user interface supported other languages. People using CNC machines
do not necessarily know English that well if at all. Smaller ethnic
groups are always shorthanded in this regards.

Ideally, one would switch between languages with a click or two.
Important for European theater of operations and others as well. I'm not
sure why keyboards don't have a dedicated key for LANG. There is this
underutilized SysRq key since DOS days.

I haven't looked into LCNC specifically so I can't comment on how hard
it is to modify it for use with other languages. Standalone XML files
for text use in GUI could be translated pretty fast IMO. There are not
too many changes between application releases so the maintenance would
not require much work.
--
Rafael
Ben Potter
2012-12-15 21:37:28 UTC
Permalink
-----Original Message-----
Sent: 15 December 2012 21:27
Subject: Re: [Emc-users] LinuxCNC documentation in russian
I haven't looked into LCNC specifically so I can't comment on how hard
it is to modify it for use with other languages. Standalone XML files
for text use in GUI could be translated pretty fast IMO. There are not
too many changes between application releases so the maintenance would
not require much work.
Unless it has changed in recent revisions, multilanguage support within
linuxcnc itself is handled using gettext; which should make
internationalization comparatively easy. In theory, this should only require
a couple of env variables to be set to change the language - not quite
single click, but not complex either.

The following link has basic instructions:
http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Internationalization

The documentation is trickier - since that tends to be natural language
rather than single phrases. It doesn't help that it's not exactly up to date
in english...
andy pugh
2012-12-15 22:09:29 UTC
Permalink
Post by Rafael Skodlar
On the other hand, if the text for UI comes from separate
files it would be relatively easy to make translations.
It is easy, and it has been done.
If your PC is set to any of Romanina, Finnish, Polish, Serbian,
Slovakian, Italian, Chines, Hungarian, Spanish, Slovak, German,
Japanese, Russian, Portugese or French then at least some of the UI
text and messages will be in your own language.
This is all done through the magic of these files:
http://git.linuxcnc.org/gitweb?p=linuxcnc.git;a=tree;f=src/po;h=378110350d800e48293b002dfd4302c209f16e56;hb=HEAD

If you want to add a new language, then I think it is fairly easy, if
a little tedious.
--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Jon Elson
2012-12-16 04:31:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by andy pugh
Post by Rafael Skodlar
One thing that Americans are terribly conservative about is standards.
They will not adopt metric system, not even at the gun point.
Not even using a 9mm?
Yeah, the military has been totally metric for quite some time. All
guns were metric
during the Vietnam war, now everything is metric, tools, maps, parts.

Autos are all metric except for wheel lugnuts.

Aircraft manufacturing is all metric. Lots of consumer products are made
in metric measure, with the US measure also on the package. Sodas, for
instance.

Jon
dave
2012-12-16 04:33:38 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Elson
Post by andy pugh
Post by Rafael Skodlar
One thing that Americans are terribly conservative about is standards.
They will not adopt metric system, not even at the gun point.
Not even using a 9mm?
Yeah, the military has been totally metric for quite some time. All
guns were metric
during the Vietnam war, now everything is metric, tools, maps, parts.
Autos are all metric except for wheel lugnuts.
Aircraft manufacturing is all metric. Lots of consumer products are made
in metric measure, with the US measure also on the package. Sodas, for
instance.
Jon
Even when I was a GI, Berlin crisis. the maps were partially metric. X,Y
grid was Km but the heights were still in feet. ;-)

Dave
Post by Jon Elson
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Mark Wendt
2012-12-16 12:06:49 UTC
Permalink
Post by dave
Even when I was a GI, Berlin crisis. the maps were partially metric. X,Y
grid was Km but the heights were still in feet. ;-)
Dave
Hmmm, back when I was flying F-4's for Uncle Sam, our charts were all
done in nautical miles.

Mark
andy pugh
2012-12-16 12:40:20 UTC
Permalink
Post by Mark Wendt
Hmmm, back when I was flying F-4's for Uncle Sam, our charts were all
done in nautical miles.
Well, the Nautical Mile is a rational unit, so seems likely to stay.
All the charts I have used have had distances in nautical miles and
depths/heights in metres.

Nautical Miles correlate directly to latitude and longitude positions,
so are probably here to stay.
(a switch to decimal units of angular measure would probably mean that
the km became the rational choice)
--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Mark Wendt
2012-12-16 12:44:32 UTC
Permalink
Post by andy pugh
Post by Mark Wendt
Hmmm, back when I was flying F-4's for Uncle Sam, our charts were all
done in nautical miles.
Well, the Nautical Mile is a rational unit, so seems likely to stay.
All the charts I have used have had distances in nautical miles and
depths/heights in metres.
Nautical Miles correlate directly to latitude and longitude positions,
so are probably here to stay.
(a switch to decimal units of angular measure would probably mean that
the km became the rational choice)
--
atp
But then we'd have to adopt some kind of metric clock. ;-)

Mark
Rafael Skodlar
2012-12-16 22:42:05 UTC
Permalink
Post by dave
Post by Jon Elson
Post by andy pugh
Post by Rafael Skodlar
One thing that Americans are terribly conservative about is standards.
They will not adopt metric system, not even at the gun point.
Not even using a 9mm?
Yeah, the military has been totally metric for quite some time. All
guns were metric
during the Vietnam war, now everything is metric, tools, maps, parts.
Autos are all metric except for wheel lugnuts.
Aircraft manufacturing is all metric. Lots of consumer products are made
in metric measure, with the US measure also on the package. Sodas, for
instance.
Jon
Even when I was a GI, Berlin crisis. the maps were partially metric. X,Y
grid was Km but the heights were still in feet. ;-)
Dave
That's because road signs were in metric so you did not need to convert
is my guess. With exception for bridges, there are no signs for heights
on the roads.

It's a SHAME (on Burma, Liberia and the United States) that with all
microcontrollers in any electronic device these days we still don't use
SI in daily life. American machine shops rarely use metric in my
experience. Same goes for hardware stores, metal suppliers, food
containers, cookie recipes, weather, GPS, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI
and when they do use it, it's not correct in most cases, see specs for
stepper motor torque in kg-cm instead of Nm by many online sellers.

Local HW store sells metric screws and bolts but they are very
expensive. What's weird is that they sell bolts in packs of 5 and nuts
in packs of 3. Go figure. People don't realize how expensive it is to
keep two systems in parallel in modern time with growing international
trade and Internet.

What is interesting is that Americans having European roots did not
adopt metric system while Japanese did long time ago.
--
Rafael
Mark Wendt
2012-12-17 10:00:03 UTC
Permalink
Post by Rafael Skodlar
What is interesting is that Americans having European roots did not
adopt metric system while Japanese did long time ago.
--
Rafael
You don't understand the ideas and ideals behind the USA. The USA
became the USA to get away from Europe. That was the whole reason for
"Independence."

Mark
andy pugh
2012-12-17 11:25:26 UTC
Permalink
Post by Mark Wendt
You don't understand the ideas and ideals behind the USA. The USA
became the USA to get away from Europe.
I thought it was to get away from Britain?
And changing to the French units would have been a logical part of that.

In fact, it very nearly happened. France sent a metre standard to the
US, but it was (accidentally) intercepted by a British privateer, and
by the time it finally arrived the chap who was bringing it had died
in captivity. Had he arrived in time, and been persuasive enough, then
the US would probably have been metric.
--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Mark Wendt
2012-12-17 12:18:46 UTC
Permalink
Post by andy pugh
Post by Mark Wendt
You don't understand the ideas and ideals behind the USA. The USA
became the USA to get away from Europe.
I thought it was to get away from Britain?
And changing to the French units would have been a logical part of that.
In fact, it very nearly happened. France sent a metre standard to the
US, but it was (accidentally) intercepted by a British privateer, and
by the time it finally arrived the chap who was bringing it had died
in captivity. Had he arrived in time, and been persuasive enough, then
the US would probably have been metric.
--
atp
That was the Revolutionary War, which didn't happen until the late
18th century. People from all over Europe were migrating to here long
before that to get away from the repressive governments and monarchies
at the time. English, Dutch, French, German and others.

Mark
Rafael Skodlar
2012-12-17 16:36:17 UTC
Permalink
Post by Mark Wendt
Post by andy pugh
Post by Mark Wendt
You don't understand the ideas and ideals behind the USA. The USA
became the USA to get away from Europe.
You are not correct here. I do understand it way better than 53% (?).
Post by Mark Wendt
Post by andy pugh
I thought it was to get away from Britain?
And changing to the French units would have been a logical part of that.
In fact, it very nearly happened. France sent a metre standard to the
US, but it was (accidentally) intercepted by a British privateer, and
by the time it finally arrived the chap who was bringing it had died
in captivity. Had he arrived in time, and been persuasive enough, then
the US would probably have been metric.
--
atp
That was the Revolutionary War, which didn't happen until the late
18th century. People from all over Europe were migrating to here long
before that to get away from the repressive governments and monarchies
at the time. English, Dutch, French, German and others.
Mark
This link tells interesting story better than I can:
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html

"The U.S. adopted the metric system in 1866. What the U.S. has failed to
do is to restrict or prohibit the use of traditional units in areas
touching the ordinary citizen: construction, real estate transactions,
retail trade, and education. The U.S. has not made the crucial
transition from "soft metric" to "hard metric", so that "1 pint (473
mL)" becomes "500 mL (1.057 pint)", with the traditional equivalent
fading into smaller type sizes and finally disappearing."

Sorry, I did not want this to escalate into political discussion; I stop
here.
--
Rafael
Mark Wendt
2012-12-16 12:05:17 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Elson
Post by andy pugh
Not even using a 9mm?
Yeah, the military has been totally metric for quite some time. All
guns were metric
during the Vietnam war, now everything is metric, tools, maps, parts.
Autos are all metric except for wheel lugnuts.
Aircraft manufacturing is all metric. Lots of consumer products are made
in metric measure, with the US measure also on the package. Sodas, for
instance.
Jon
Interesting then, that the military is re-introducing the .45. ;-)

How come I carry a .45? Cuz they don't make a .46...

Mark
dave
2012-12-15 22:53:36 UTC
Permalink
On Sat, 2012-12-15 at 12:07 -0800, Rafael Skodlar wrote:
<massive snip>
Post by Rafael Skodlar
Well, that would not happen without help from the USA to rebuild West
Germany after the war. At least the rate of reconstruction would be much
slower for whole EU. Remember that huge number of men were killed in the
war and had to be replaced with "imports". If US used the same kind of
regime as the Soviets, you would not see Mercedes and BMW on the streets
of EU and much less in Asia these days. It was loans and access to
American market that made western EU recover so fast.
One thing that Americans are terribly conservative about is standards.
They will not adopt metric system, not even at the gun point. Part of
that is due to conservative unions that want to keep doing the same
thing over and over. We could turn our economy around simply with
mandatory conversion to metric system.
OT...........

We had our chance in the 50's and 60's when we build the Interstate Hwy
System. We muffed it. Marking the distance in Km and selling gas by the
Liter would have made a relatively painless conversion. Among other
things some business got greedy (big surprise) and converted to metric
units but effectively increase the price 10-20 % above the conversion
thinking the public was too ignorant or stupid to notice.

However, automotive and aerospace have converted basically because they
are international. When I weighed into a hospital(s) the other day one
was metric and the other still english. So there is an undercurrent but
the general public understands the metric system about as well as they
science.

There is also a significant portion of the public that is so
conservative they think that metric is un-american. The believe in other
fantasies also. ;-)

Just my tuppence.

Dave
John Thornton
2012-12-14 11:51:04 UTC
Permalink
That is my thoughts exactly, why clutter up the repo with untranslated
docs. All the master docs and the html indexes use the English docs
unless it is a real translated chapter in the case of the Spanish docs.
Post by Sebastian Kuzminsky
Post by John Thornton
Actually there is no translated docs in German or Polish and only a few
chapters have been translated to Spanish.
Has nothing at all been translated to German and Polish?! If so we
should drop them!
Andrey
2012-12-14 17:52:32 UTC
Permalink
Greetings All
Google's translation of technical documentation is terrible. Meaning of the text is completely distorted
Viesturs, if you read in Russian you can find something here :   http://www.cnc-club.ru/forum/viewforum.
Viesturs Lācis
2012-12-14 18:27:17 UTC
Permalink
http://www.cnc-club.ru/forum/viewforum.php?f=15
Thank You!
--
Viesturs

If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Kent A. Reed
2012-12-13 20:00:14 UTC
Permalink
Post by Viesturs Lācis
Post by andy pugh
Post by Viesturs Lācis
Is there any chance that somebody might have translated LinuxCNC
documentation to russian language?
You don't fancy doing the Latvian translation then?
Actually, in all seriousness, translating the _software_ into Latvian
could give you a good position in your local market, and I think it is
http://git.linuxcnc.org/gitweb?p=linuxcnc.git;a=tree;f=src/po;h=b8792851093add9da9cdae22f094c4875514efb0;hb=HEAD
Thanks for the link, now I understand, what it takes to add another
language to LinuxCNC.
Just that there are almost 14K lines in russian translation file,
almost 16K lines in polish translation. Does not seem like a job for a
weekend to translate all those phrases in there, especially all the
error messages.
I will think about that as I totally agree - having a translation in
Latvian would be pretty good selling point, but just like majority of
us I have so many things more urgent to do...
But my initial question was about documentation so that I could give
the guy something to read and then he would ask me questions rather
than I try to figure out, what is the best way to start explaining
things.
Viesturs:

I know these are crude solutions but they might get you started with
your customer.

1) Try http://translate.google.com

Set it up to translate English to Russian, enter a URL (such as
http://www.linuxcnc.org/docs/2.5/html/common/System_Requirements.html),
and see if it gets you close. Aside: The result looks Russian to me,
but that's just because it's in Cyrillic font. For all I know it's a
Chinese food menu :-)

2) use the Google Chrome browser with its built-in automation of the same.

Good luck!

Regards,
Kent
cogoman
2012-12-15 06:26:12 UTC
Permalink
But my initial question was about documentation so that I could giv=
e
the guy something to read and then he would ask me questions rather
than I try to figure out, what is the best way to start explaining
things.
I was surprised that most "babelfish" translators don't speak Russian=
. =20
I eventually found a link to a babelfish.yahoo.com, which linked me t=
o a=20
Micro$oft version of babelfish that will translate a web page to Russ=
ian.

http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=3Den&to=3Dru&a=3Dhttp=
://linuxcnc.org/docs/html/quickstart/stepper_quickstart.html


I realize many of the technical terms will be left out or translat=
ed=20
incorrectly, but sometimes it's enough for someone to "get the gist o=
f=20
it". I found a web site that had a page on a certain class "A"=20
amplifier. The page was in French, and when the page referenced the=
=20
"power supply" it came back in english as "it's food". A strange=
=20
translation, but still communicates what the guy was talking about.

Though not perfect, babelfish might be just what you need for now.
Jon Elson
2012-12-15 20:39:46 UTC
Permalink
I realize many of the technical terms will be left out or translated
incorrectly, but sometimes it's enough for someone to "get the gist of
it". I found a web site that had a page on a certain class "A"
amplifier. The page was in French, and when the page referenced the
"power supply" it came back in english as "it's food". A strange
translation, but still communicates what the guy was talking about.
French is a VERY idiomatic, quirky language. The translation error is
understandable,
as power source or power feed is "alimentation" in French, which means
feed or food.

Jon
Andrew
2012-12-13 19:12:04 UTC
Permalink
unknown
1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Permalink
2012/12/13 Viesturs Lācis
Post by Viesturs Lācis
Hello!
Is there any chance that somebody might have translated LinuxCNC
documentation to russian language?
I am particularly looking for basic introductions, "Getting started
guide", because I am now installing a machine at client's site and
wanted to give the operator some reading to get familiar with
LinuxCNC, but the thing is that just like many people in my country,
his english skills are bad, but he is pretty fluent in russian.
http://www.cnc-club.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=150
But I find Integrators' manual to be no good for a complete CNC beginner.
Hi Viesturs,

I'm afraid that's all in Russian. I have not seen translated user manual.
If you find anything please let me know.

Andrew
Ron Ginger
2012-12-17 04:05:45 UTC
Permalink
Post by Rafael Skodlar
What is interesting is that Americans having European roots did not
adopt metric system while Japanese did long time ago.
-- Rafael
The US did adopt the metric system. The Metric Conversion Act of 1975
(Public Law 94-168) passed by Congress. The Metric Act established the
U.S. Metric Board to coordinate and plan the increasing use and
voluntary conversion to the metric system.

But then in 1982 President Ronald Reagan disbanded the U.S. Metric Board
and canceled its funding.

So, as with so many things Regan declared the government was the
problem, and our slow decay of infrastructure, science research and the
space program began.

ron ginger
Mark Wendt
2012-12-17 10:03:19 UTC
Permalink
Post by Ron Ginger
Post by Rafael Skodlar
What is interesting is that Americans having European roots did not
adopt metric system while Japanese did long time ago.
-- Rafael
The US did adopt the metric system. The Metric Conversion Act of 1975
(Public Law 94-168) passed by Congress. The Metric Act established the
U.S. Metric Board to coordinate and plan the increasing use and
voluntary conversion to the metric system.
But then in 1982 President Ronald Reagan disbanded the U.S. Metric Board
and canceled its funding.
So, as with so many things Regan declared the government was the
problem, and our slow decay of infrastructure, science research and the
space program began.
ron ginger
Yup that sad decay. We're building private space ports, and still
pretty much lead the world in technology. Infrastructure decay is
solely at the feet of the government. They'd rather spend money on
things not necessary, like the bridge to nowhere, entitlements, and
many other useless programs to buy votes, rather than fix the things
that should be fixed.

Reagan was 100% correct. Government is the problem.

Mark
Marshland Engineering
2012-12-17 10:33:53 UTC
Permalink
Restarted the machine the next day and it connects !!!

Thanks Wallace.
Marshland Engineering
2012-12-17 10:40:09 UTC
Permalink
I found PNCConf and this is what I have setup so far. Not sure what half the
bits are.

Lathe_Copley
Axis XZ Lathe
Machine Units mm

Test Base Jitter
Computer response time 1029317 Max Intgerval
Base Thread 742185
Actual Serv Period - 100000

I/O
Mesa 5I20
GUI Axis

External Controls - No Change
Front end No Change
Virtual Control No Change
Defaults
Require Homing before MDI
Popup Tool Change Prompt

MESA I/O Setup 7I48
Firmware SVST8_4
PWM Base Frequency 24000
PDM Base Ferquency 6000
WatchDog Timer 10000000
Num Encoders 3
Num of pwm Generators 3
Step Get 0
Total Numebr of Pins 72

ACCEPT CHANGES
I/O Connector 2
0: X Encoder
2: Z Encoder

0: X Axis PWM - Pulse Width Gen-P
2: z Axis PWM - Pulse Width Gen-P

I/O Connector 3
024: X Limit +
025: X Limit -
026: X Home

032: Z Limit +
033: Z Limit -
034: Z Home

036: EStop
037: Start
037: Stop
038: Single Step

X and Z unchanged for the momemt
Advanced Options - None
Hal Component Page No change


When I run the diagnostcs for the Mesa card I get

PNCconf encountered an error. The following information may be useful in
troubleshooting:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/pncconf", line 5398, in on_mesapanel_clicked
self.halrun.close()
KeyboardInterrupt


Anyone have a MESA Lathe configuration I an look at ?

Cheers Wallace
Marshland Engineering
2013-11-06 19:47:59 UTC
Permalink
I'm looking to make a new CNC table for both Plasma and possibly Plastic and
Aluminum cutting. It will be about 1.8m x 1.2m.
I was wondering if anyone has a similar configuration that is run with
toothed belts instead of ballscrews? Obvously a lot cheaper option, however,
I was wondering on the rigidity of the overall construction. I probably
would only be cutting up to 3 mm aly plate with a 6mm diameter or less
cutter.

Thanks Wallace
Dave Cole
2013-11-06 20:43:17 UTC
Permalink
Steve Blackmore
2013-11-06 23:53:51 UTC
Permalink
Post by unknown
A lot of that depends on your belt arrangement. They make linear
motion belting with a unique tooth profile. They use steel cords in
polyurethane belts to minimize stretch and they can obtain zero backlash
with that setup. To get more rigidity you can go with a wider belt but
then the price of the sprockets goes though the roof. When you get
that big, ball screw whipping becomes an issue if you want to use it for
plasma and need to move fast on thin sheetmetal. Plus they get very
expensive as you know..
Ballscrew whip isn't a problem if you use large diameter and pitch
screws. I have a 2.5m one here off a laser cutter - 32mm diameter 10mm
pitch. It's preloaded at both ends and has double anti backlash nuts.

Never got round to building anything to fit it on and I certainly
wouldn't like to buy one - I got it for nothing out of the scrap bin :)
There's nothing wrong with it, the company change them every year
whether they need it or not !! Unfortunately never been back when they
just changed one again.

Steve Blackmore
--
andy pugh
2013-11-06 20:49:48 UTC
Permalink
On 6 November 2013 19:47, Marshland Engineering
Post by Marshland Engineering
I was wondering if anyone has a similar configuration that is run with
toothed belts instead of ballscrews?
Have a look at the Bell-Everman "Servobelt" arrangement. That
minimises the amount of belt that has the chance to stretch and, by a
fortuitous twist, keeps dirt out of the teeth.

I can make T5 profile pullleys (I have the hob and a hobbing machine,
and now that I have the X axis working (which the pulley was for) the
surface finish is better too)

--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Dave Cole
2013-11-06 22:14:57 UTC
Permalink
andy pugh
2013-11-06 22:21:37 UTC
Permalink
Post by unknown
That is a sweet setup you have Andy... That hob does not look cheap..
eBay, £35.
Post by unknown
The problem with the Bell Everman drive setup is that by the time you
cut the belt engagement grooves in the mating surface
...
Post by unknown
I saw another setup where they glued a belt to the mating surface to
create the rack.. but I can see a lot of problems with that..
The belt-glued-to-the frame version was what I had in mind.
--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Dave Cole
2013-11-07 04:36:20 UTC
Permalink
John Thornton
2013-11-06 23:24:55 UTC
Permalink
I have a belt driven plasma table that I've been using for years, in
fact it was my first EMC machine that I built. The biggest problem with
my design is the linear bearings that I used, they just slide over the
extruded aluminum. I would go with bigger belts next time or invest in
the dual belt system if not too pricy.

http://gnipsel.com/shop/plasma/plasma.xhtml

JT
Post by Marshland Engineering
I'm looking to make a new CNC table for both Plasma and possibly Plastic and
Aluminum cutting. It will be about 1.8m x 1.2m.
I was wondering if anyone has a similar configuration that is run with
toothed belts instead of ballscrews? Obvously a lot cheaper option, however,
I was wondering on the rigidity of the overall construction. I probably
would only be cutting up to 3 mm aly plate with a 6mm diameter or less
cutter.
Thanks Wallace
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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t***@yahoo.com
2013-11-07 01:11:18 UTC
Permalink
why doesn't someone try turning the nut not the screw? Bridgeport bosses X axis screw was bolted to the end of the table

Terry
Post by John Thornton
I have a belt driven plasma table that I've been using for years, in
fact it was my first EMC machine that I built. The biggest problem with
my design is the linear bearings that I used, they just slide over the
extruded aluminum. I would go with bigger belts next time or invest in
the dual belt system if not too pricy.
http://gnipsel.com/shop/plasma/plasma.xhtml
JT
Post by Marshland Engineering
I'm looking to make a new CNC table for both Plasma and possibly Plastic and
Aluminum cutting. It will be about 1.8m x 1.2m.
I was wondering if anyone has a similar configuration that is run with
toothed belts instead of ballscrews? Obvously a lot cheaper option, however,
I was wondering on the rigidity of the overall construction. I probably
would only be cutting up to 3 mm aly plate with a 6mm diameter or less
cutter.
Thanks Wallace
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November Webinars for C, C++, Fortran Developers
Accelerate application performance with scalable programming models. Explore
techniques for threading, error checking, porting, and tuning. Get the most
from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60136231&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Accelerate application performance with scalable programming models. Explore
techniques for threading, error checking, porting, and tuning. Get the most
from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register
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Gene Heskett
2013-11-07 04:03:09 UTC
Permalink
Post by t***@yahoo.com
why doesn't someone try turning the nut not the screw? Bridgeport bosses
X axis screw was bolted to the end of the table
Terry
When I did the 2nd attempt to make a Z drive for my mill, that is what I
did. Now that I have some ball bearing shoes riding the post to get rid of
the stiction, its working great.
Post by t***@yahoo.com
Post by John Thornton
I have a belt driven plasma table that I've been using for years, in
fact it was my first EMC machine that I built. The biggest problem
with my design is the linear bearings that I used, they just slide
over the extruded aluminum. I would go with bigger belts next time or
invest in the dual belt system if not too pricy.
http://gnipsel.com/shop/plasma/plasma.xhtml
JT
Post by Marshland Engineering
I'm looking to make a new CNC table for both Plasma and possibly
Plastic and Aluminum cutting. It will be about 1.8m x 1.2m.
I was wondering if anyone has a similar configuration that is run
with toothed belts instead of ballscrews? Obvously a lot cheaper
option, however, I was wondering on the rigidity of the overall
construction. I probably would only be cutting up to 3 mm aly plate
with a 6mm diameter or less cutter.
Thanks Wallace
---------------------------------------------------------------------
--------- November Webinars for C, C++, Fortran Developers
Accelerate application performance with scalable programming models.
Explore techniques for threading, error checking, porting, and
tuning. Get the most from the latest Intel processors and
coprocessors. See abstracts and register
http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60136231&iu=/4140/ostg
.clktrk _______________________________________________
Emc-users mailing list
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-------- November Webinars for C, C++, Fortran Developers
Accelerate application performance with scalable programming models.
Explore techniques for threading, error checking, porting, and
tuning. Get the most from the latest Intel processors and
coprocessors. See abstracts and register
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clktrk _______________________________________________
Emc-users mailing list
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
------ November Webinars for C, C++, Fortran Developers
Accelerate application performance with scalable programming models.
Explore techniques for threading, error checking, porting, and tuning.
Get the most from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See
abstracts and register
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ktrk _______________________________________________
Emc-users mailing list
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Cheers, Gene
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi.
(What Jove may do, is not permitted to a cow.)
A pen in the hand of this president is far more
dangerous than 200 million guns in the hands of
law-abiding citizens.
Dave Cole
2013-11-07 04:44:38 UTC
Permalink
Viesturs Lācis
2013-11-07 07:24:09 UTC
Permalink
Post by t***@yahoo.com
why doesn't someone try turning the nut not the screw? Bridgeport bosses X
axis screw was bolted to the end of the table
Oh, there have been attempts to do that. I know that Andy has something
like that and I myself also built a machine with fixed ballscrew and
rotating nut. The conclusion - I will not do that again unless I really
really really really really need that and other alternatives are: none. It
requires precise machining of the parts and little more precise assembly.

I built a gantry router 2700x1400 mm, it has rack and pinion. There are
many examples, where rack and pinion is successfully used for routers and I
am satisfied with it. I would like to have less vibration, but I think that
having almost 3 m long gantry needed something more than just 180x90 mm
extruded aluminium profile to make it stiffer.
--
Viesturs
andy pugh
2013-11-07 10:22:00 UTC
Permalink
Post by t***@yahoo.com
why doesn't someone try turning the nut not the screw? Bridgeport bosses X axis screw was bolted to the end of the table
I actually rather like this arrangement, and have used it in two
places on my mill.
Z: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/GkFZLDkk88gzRy9NWh16s9MTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink
This has the nut above the cabinet base (in the original location) and
the motor inside the cabinet. Drive to the nut is through a tube
coaxial with the screw.

X: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/oLM693wLua_FB8juhNe26tMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink
This took rather a lot of engineering, requiring a very custom timing
pulley, which required me to set up to hob my own timing pulleys.
The vernier-slotted preload adjusting rings are locked with a wire
spring clip in a manner stolen from Ducati rear wheels.
--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Gene Heskett
2013-11-07 16:10:13 UTC
Permalink
Post by andy pugh
Post by t***@yahoo.com
why doesn't someone try turning the nut not the screw? Bridgeport
bosses X axis screw was bolted to the end of the table
I actually rather like this arrangement, and have used it in two
places on my mill.
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/GkFZLDkk88gzRy9NWh16s9MTjNZETYmyP
Jy0liipFm0?feat=directlink This has the nut above the cabinet base (in
the original location) and the motor inside the cabinet. Drive to the
nut is through a tube coaxial with the screw.
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/oLM693wLua_FB8juhNe26tMTjNZETYmyP
Jy0liipFm0?feat=directlink This took rather a lot of engineering,
requiring a very custom timing pulley, which required me to set up to
hob my own timing pulleys. The vernier-slotted preload adjusting rings
are locked with a wire spring clip in a manner stolen from Ducati rear
wheels.
Now this one I am tempted to try in my toy mill as there isn't room enough
between the XY tables to fit a cage for the .750" diameter nut of an
8mmx2.5" ball screw. I do have room for it to project as that is all under
the keyboard shelf. Now to see if any of those are left.

Cheers, Gene
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

You can't have your cake and let your neighbor eat it too.
-- Ayn Rand
A pen in the hand of this president is far more
dangerous than 200 million guns in the hands of
law-abiding citizens.
Marius Liebenberg
2013-11-07 14:34:28 UTC
Permalink
I have such a setup where I turn the nut. It works very well.
Post by t***@yahoo.com
why doesn't someone try turning the nut not the screw? Bridgeport bosses X axis screw was bolted to the end of the table
Terry
Post by John Thornton
I have a belt driven plasma table that I've been using for years, in
fact it was my first EMC machine that I built. The biggest problem with
my design is the linear bearings that I used, they just slide over the
extruded aluminum. I would go with bigger belts next time or invest in
the dual belt system if not too pricy.
http://gnipsel.com/shop/plasma/plasma.xhtml
JT
Post by Marshland Engineering
I'm looking to make a new CNC table for both Plasma and possibly Plastic and
Aluminum cutting. It will be about 1.8m x 1.2m.
I was wondering if anyone has a similar configuration that is run with
toothed belts instead of ballscrews? Obvously a lot cheaper option, however,
I was wondering on the rigidity of the overall construction. I probably
would only be cutting up to 3 mm aly plate with a 6mm diameter or less
cutter.
Thanks Wallace
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--
Regards / Groete

Marius D. Liebenberg
MasterCut cc
Cel: +27 82 698 3251
Tel: +27 12 743 6064
Fax: +27 86 551 8029
Skype: marius_d.liebenberg


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Dave Cole
2013-11-07 14:50:16 UTC
Permalink
andy pugh
2013-11-07 18:05:46 UTC
Permalink
Post by unknown
Probably another issue with turning the nut is how can you automatically
lube the nut?
If you look at my X-nut, there is a small threaded hole in the casting
below the screw. This goes to a drilling that emerges between the two
angular-contact bearings (that have their inner rubber seals picked
out) and then through a second drilling in the rotating nut carrier
aligned with the (fortuitously not sealed) ball return plug in the
nut.
--
atp
If you can't fix it, you don't own it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto
Gregg Eshelman
2013-11-07 01:27:34 UTC
Permalink
Post by Marshland Engineering
I'm looking to make a new CNC table for both Plasma and possibly Plastic and
Aluminum cutting. It will be about 1.8m x 1.2m.
I was wondering if anyone has a similar configuration that is run with
toothed belts instead of ballscrews? Obvously a lot cheaper option, however,
I was wondering on the rigidity of the overall construction. I probably
would only be cutting up to 3 mm aly plate with a 6mm diameter or less
cutter.
Thanks Wallace
You'll have to fully shield the belts if you intend to use belt drive
for plasma cutting. Search for CNC chain drive on Youtube for many
examples of how to use stationary roller chains to drive a gantry.

If you want to avoid having to keep separate motors synchronized, use a
cross shaft to drive both sides.
John Thornton
2013-11-07 12:07:36 UTC
Permalink
Why would you need to shield the belts? I've run my plasma with the
belts hanging out in the breeze for years...

I agree a shaft connecting both sides of the gantry is the best way to
go. I did find a thin wall tube to connect the sides worked much better
than a shaft.

JT
Post by Gregg Eshelman
Post by Marshland Engineering
I'm looking to make a new CNC table for both Plasma and possibly Plastic and
Aluminum cutting. It will be about 1.8m x 1.2m.
I was wondering if anyone has a similar configuration that is run with
toothed belts instead of ballscrews? Obvously a lot cheaper option, however,
I was wondering on the rigidity of the overall construction. I probably
would only be cutting up to 3 mm aly plate with a 6mm diameter or less
cutter.
Thanks Wallace
You'll have to fully shield the belts if you intend to use belt drive
for plasma cutting. Search for CNC chain drive on Youtube for many
examples of how to use stationary roller chains to drive a gantry.
If you want to avoid having to keep separate motors synchronized, use a
cross shaft to drive both sides.
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unknown
1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Permalink
A lot of that depends on your belt arrangement. They make linear
motion belting with a unique tooth profile. They use steel cords in
polyurethane belts to minimize stretch and they can obtain zero backlash
with that setup. To get more rigidity you can go with a wider belt but
then the price of the sprockets goes though the roof. When you get
that big, ball screw whipping becomes an issue if you want to use it for
plasma and need to move fast on thin sheetmetal. Plus they get very
expensive as you know..

Milling and Plasma is almost at opposite ends of the motion spectrum -
speed wise.

Then you need to face the accuracy issue ... how accurate are the belts
you want to buy? What accuracy do you need?

Most Plasmas of that size use a rack and pinion drive.

That said, I have a belt driven plasma machine that is in progress...
and has been for over a year now..

Dave
Post by Marshland Engineering
I'm looking to make a new CNC table for both Plasma and possibly Plastic and
Aluminum cutting. It will be about 1.8m x 1.2m.
I was wondering if anyone has a similar configuration that is run with
toothed belts instead of ballscrews? Obvously a lot cheaper option, however,
I was wondering on the rigidity of the overall construction. I probably
would only be cutting up to 3 mm aly plate with a 6mm diameter or less
cutter.
Thanks Wallace
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register
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unknown
1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Permalink
That is a sweet setup you have Andy... That hob does not look cheap..

The problem with the Bell Everman drive setup is that by the time you
cut the belt engagement grooves in the mating surface you have
basically created a rack that is engaged with a belt rather than a
pinion and to me that defeats the entire purpose of a low cost belt drive.
You might was well go with a steel rack with one or more pinions
engaging it.. although the belt does eliminate lubrication issues.

I saw another setup where they glued a belt to the mating surface to
create the rack.. but I can see a lot of problems with that..

Bonding polyurethane to steel seems to be an art.

Dave
Post by andy pugh
On 6 November 2013 19:47, Marshland Engineering
Post by Marshland Engineering
I was wondering if anyone has a similar configuration that is run with
toothed belts instead of ballscrews?
Have a look at the Bell-Everman "Servobelt" arrangement. That
minimises the amount of belt that has the chance to stretch and, by a
fortuitous twist, keeps dirt out of the teeth.
I can make T5 profile pullleys (I have the hob and a hobbing machine,
and now that I have the X axis working (which the pulley was for) the
surface finish is better too)
http://youtu.be/ltmZrDrt6pQ
unknown
1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Permalink
Gotta love ebay.. :-)
Post by andy pugh
Post by unknown
That is a sweet setup you have Andy... That hob does not look cheap..
eBay, £35.
Post by unknown
The problem with the Bell Everman drive setup is that by the time you
cut the belt engagement grooves in the mating surface
...
Post by unknown
I saw another setup where they glued a belt to the mating surface to
create the rack.. but I can see a lot of problems with that..
The belt-glued-to-the frame version was what I had in mind.
unknown
1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Permalink
That gets rid of the whip/critical speed problem but doesn't solve the
cost issue. In general, driving the nut is much more difficult than
driving the screw.
I have a Bridgeport Series 2 Boss and the X screw is driven via the end
of the screw off the left end.

Dave
Post by t***@yahoo.com
why doesn't someone try turning the nut not the screw? Bridgeport bosses X axis screw was bolted to the end of the table
Terry
Post by John Thornton
I have a belt driven plasma table that I've been using for years, in
fact it was my first EMC machine that I built. The biggest problem with
my design is the linear bearings that I used, they just slide over the
extruded aluminum. I would go with bigger belts next time or invest in
the dual belt system if not too pricy.
http://gnipsel.com/shop/plasma/plasma.xhtml
JT
Post by Marshland Engineering
I'm looking to make a new CNC table for both Plasma and possibly Plastic and
Aluminum cutting. It will be about 1.8m x 1.2m.
I was wondering if anyone has a similar configuration that is run with
toothed belts instead of ballscrews? Obvously a lot cheaper option, however,
I was wondering on the rigidity of the overall construction. I probably
would only be cutting up to 3 mm aly plate with a 6mm diameter or less
cutter.
Thanks Wallace
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Accelerate application performance with scalable programming models. Explore
techniques for threading, error checking, porting, and tuning. Get the most
from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register
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unknown
1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Permalink
Probably another issue with turning the nut is how can you automatically
lube the nut? My Bridgeport has a central lube system with tubes
running all over and an auto oiler. The tubes run right to the ball
screw nuts...
Just a thought...

Dave
Post by Marius Liebenberg
I have such a setup where I turn the nut. It works very well.
Post by t***@yahoo.com
why doesn't someone try turning the nut not the screw? Bridgeport bosses X axis screw was bolted to the end of the table
Terry
Post by John Thornton
I have a belt driven plasma table that I've been using for years, in
fact it was my first EMC machine that I built. The biggest problem with
my design is the linear bearings that I used, they just slide over the
extruded aluminum. I would go with bigger belts next time or invest in
the dual belt system if not too pricy.
http://gnipsel.com/shop/plasma/plasma.xhtml
JT
Post by Marshland Engineering
I'm looking to make a new CNC table for both Plasma and possibly Plastic and
Aluminum cutting. It will be about 1.8m x 1.2m.
I was wondering if anyone has a similar configuration that is run with
toothed belts instead of ballscrews? Obvously a lot cheaper option, however,
I was wondering on the rigidity of the overall construction. I probably
would only be cutting up to 3 mm aly plate with a 6mm diameter or less
cutter.
Thanks Wallace
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Accelerate application performance with scalable programming models. Explore
techniques for threading, error checking, porting, and tuning. Get the most
from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register
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