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From: Sam Harmon <samuel.har...@gmail.com>
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Subject: CNC machine progress
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2012 11:37:42 -0400
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On Saturday, Joe O, Matt, and myself spent some time trying to get the =
MaxNC CNC mill working with EMC2. It was a learning experience :-) So =
far all we've managed to do is get the spindle to run, and it only does =
that when the controlling computer is powered down...

It turns out the MaxNC doesn't use a "standard" stepper motor control =
(i.e. send step/direction per axis using 2 pins each on the parallel =
port) - the motors have encoders attached (making them a little more =
like servos), and it uses some kind of quadrature encoding and has some =
microcontrollers in its onboard electronics that in turn step the =
stepper motors. In theory, EMC2 can support this through a function =
called 'stepgen', but I haven't found a decent tutorial or working =
configuration from someone else.

There are still a few avenues we're going to try to approach:
1: Use Mach3 on a Windows machine- It looks like the MaxNC electronics =
are supported by Mach3. It would probably be useful to try this (in the =
free version of Mach3 that limits you to 500 gcode instructions per file =
so we don't shell out $175 or whatever) just to figure out if the =
electronics do in fact work. If we can get it to run at all we could =
maybe see what's going on in the parallel port to figure out what needs =
to happen for the EMC2 configuration. Now we just need a working Windows =
install on a machine with a parallel port...

2: Through a MaxNC yahoo group, I found the executable for the original =
DOS software that shipped with the machine. This may not be terribly =
helpful, as I can't get it to run at all in DOSbox (seems to be missing =
all kinds of other files)

3: Try appealing to the internet for support: Noisebridge (the San =
Francisco hackerspace) has (as far as I can tell) an identical mill. =
they claim to have it working in EMC2, but didn't share the config =
files. I've asked via twitter for their config. I'll probably try some =
targeted e-mails to them next. There's also a guy involved with the =
Tesla Orchestra (our new neighbors at LH) who is an EMC2 developer. He =
may also be a good resource.

4: If all else fails, we can chuck the existing electronics and get a =
Geckodrive or some other 4-axis CNC stepper driver and roll with that. I =
may even order some cheap-ish one soon just to experiment with.

Sam=