#linuxcnc Logs
Sep 20 2021
#linuxcnc Calendar
12:54 AM Deejay: moin
01:42 AM TurBoss: morning
05:09 AM JT-Cave: morning
05:25 AM TurBoss: JT-Cave: hello! have you tried python3 yet?
05:25 AM JT-Cave: no
05:26 AM TurBoss: ouch
06:18 AM JT-Cave: been busy trying to finish up some jobs and projects
07:22 AM JT-Cave: wow someone finally took that stupid do you want to copy this sim Yes
07:22 AM JT-Cave: NO I don't want to make a copy of the sim I just want to look at it lol
07:34 AM TurBoss: :D
07:42 AM JT-Cave: https://dpaste.com/28R2SAAML
07:57 AM TurBoss: :/
08:00 AM TurBoss: for some reason linuxcnc.so looks like python2
08:21 AM JT-Cave: yeah weird, I gave up on the RIP and installed from buildbot
08:21 AM JT-Cave: but hi ho hi ho it's off to work I go
08:22 AM perry_j1987: mornin
08:53 AM TurBoss: morning
08:59 AM Loetmichel: Maaan, coworkers. I just recharged the two car 53Ah car batteries my boss uses in the EMI measurement chamber instead of a 24V PSU... dead empty. The'll never learn. Is it SO hard to put them on the charger every evening and not wait until the DUT switches off for undervoltage? Lead acid starter batteries dont like full cycles :(
11:52 AM JT-Cave: lunch minute is over back to work
12:01 PM roycroft: when did you say you think you'll get more mesa boards, jt-cave?
01:28 PM roycroft: note to self: keep up with scanning/shredding documents
01:28 PM roycroft: today is pay day, and since i don't work in the office any more i get my mid-month pay draw the same time as my monthlypay check
01:29 PM roycroft: i had not scanned/shredded receipts and the like since april, because i was doing other things and could not be bothered
01:29 PM roycroft: it just took me an hour to find the check
01:29 PM roycroft: and while doing so i made a nice pile of things to feed to the scanner
02:32 PM roycroft: i just got an email from the ebay seller for whose linear rails i made an offer - "Because pandemic and high demand sell/supply we do not accept offers. You should just press buy now."
02:32 PM roycroft: that's fine
02:32 PM roycroft: but then why is there a "make offer" button?
02:33 PM roycroft: that is something that one has to add to a listing - it is not there by default
02:35 PM roycroft: i know some people never respond to offers, but leave the button there to help them gauge what people are willing to pay for an item
02:35 PM roycroft: but those people do not lecture folks who make offers on the inappropriateness of doing so
02:35 PM roycroft: they just ignore the offers
02:52 PM abetusk: Would folks mind taking a loot at this sellers internal picture of a fiber laser? https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32974751052.html
02:52 PM abetusk: specifically: https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/H1ed1c0eac6024e539eb5314791c3b1bdr.png
02:53 PM abetusk: The black box on the lower right looks like a stepper motor controller. I would assume that this is for the galvo mirror or whatever is used to control the mirror
02:54 PM abetusk: Why is there only one controller? Is the galvo mirror a simple stepper motor? If so, isn't that a prime candidate to be controlled by LinuxCNC or some other controller?
03:03 PM gloops`: covid changed a lot on ebay
03:03 PM gloops`: not many cheap machines now
03:05 PM roycroft: everything is going up except wages
03:13 PM abetusk: Those fiber lasers were $2.5k+ a year ago
03:39 PM abetusk: ah, maybe I'm completely mistaken. Maybe the controller is only for the rotating shaft. The galvo control must be from the main board....
03:54 PM CloudEvil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlcNR215TFY&t=6s I wish the price scaled with eweight
03:54 PM CloudEvil: This May Be One of The World's Smallest Lathes !!!
06:14 PM roycroft: i was watching a video about a cnc router build, and the presenter noted that his power supply cannot deliver enough current to drive all of his stepper motors at full draw simultaneous, but noted that "that's ok, because i'm doing microstepping"
06:14 PM roycroft: he then went on to say "i'm not going to discuss this, but i can overdrive my power supply with microstepping"
06:14 PM roycroft: so i'm left without knowing the rationale behind that
06:15 PM CloudEvil: This May Be One of The World's Smallest Lathes !!!
06:15 PM CloudEvil: oops
06:15 PM roycroft: i'm thinking that it's because the motors will be toggling on and off so frequently the current draw curve will be smoothed out, and therefore the average current draw will be reduced
06:15 PM roycroft: can anyone elaborate on that?
06:16 PM CloudEvil: Well, yes, but full stepping also does current regulation
06:16 PM roycroft: that's calculated into the current spec for the motor though, isn't it?
06:18 PM roycroft: it's at least analagous to the rms voltage of an ac-powered device
06:19 PM roycroft: it's at least somewhat annoying when a person says "i did this, and it is good, but i'm not going to tell you why"
06:22 PM XXCoder: roy thats weird lol
06:22 PM XXCoder: if i recall right, steppers being idle is highest power usage for stepper
06:22 PM XXCoder: so microstepping dont fix that
06:29 PM infornography: ello, I'm trying to get a vistaCNC M1 working.
06:31 PM infornography: LinuxCNC terminated with and error.
06:33 PM infornography: Let me put the text into a file...
06:34 PM roycroft: i know nothing of this vistacnc
06:34 PM roycroft: my initial observation is that it was poorly named
06:35 PM roycroft: just as major hurricane names are retired forever, the disaster that was windows vista necessitates retiring the term 'vista' from the it community forever
06:36 PM roycroft: as well, operating system releases must now go from 7 to 9, as release 8 is forever unusable
06:37 PM roycroft: oh, those are the imach pendant people
06:37 PM roycroft: i looked at one of those pendants, but got turned off by the "imach" name :)
06:38 PM roycroft: now i'm further turned off that the company name is "vistacnc"
06:38 PM roycroft: i hope their parent company is not named "hindenburg enterprises"
06:39 PM infornography: lol
06:39 PM infornography: valid points
06:39 PM roycroft: naming conventions aside, the pendants look pretty decent
06:41 PM infornography: http://thonkpad.net/docs/linuxcnc.report
06:41 PM roycroft: their driver for linuxcnc is four years and a half years old
06:43 PM infornography: the file they provided vc-ml.hal
06:43 PM infornography: "Debug file information:
06:43 PM infornography: Note: Using POSIX realtime
06:43 PM infornography: ./vc-m1.hal:4: Pin 'axis.0.jog-enable' does not exist
06:43 PM infornography: 1252
06:43 PM infornography: Stopping realtime threads"
06:43 PM infornography: ?
06:43 PM infornography: where do I go from here?
06:45 PM Tom_L: it may be joint now instead of axis
06:45 PM Tom_L: what lcnc version?
06:47 PM infornography: thats... 2.8.2
06:47 PM Tom_L: so check for that under joint instead of axis
06:49 PM infornography: :o I moved on to line 5 now
06:49 PM infornography: yes
06:49 PM infornography: TY
06:51 PM infornography: Now I'm to "halui.jog.0.plus does not exist"
06:52 PM Tom_L: there were a handfull of naming conventions changed from 2.7 to 2.8
06:52 PM infornography: What file are these in?
06:52 PM Tom_L: the hal file
06:56 PM Tom_L: http://linuxcnc.org/docs/2.8/html/man/man1/halui.1.html
06:58 PM infornography: damn , this turned into a project
06:58 PM infornography: I think you pointed me in the right direction though
06:59 PM infornography: thanks
06:59 PM Tom_L: name changes among versions can be a hassle
07:05 PM roycroft: when you get it working let me know what you think of the pendant
07:05 PM roycroft: i can get past the naming :)
07:05 PM roycroft: and they do look decent from what i've read online
07:14 PM infornography: will do
07:14 PM infornography: Win98CNC
07:15 PM infornography: WinMECNC
07:15 PM infornography: those will be the good ones
07:36 PM JT-Cave: roycroft, in a week or two
07:51 PM roycroft: thanks, jt-cave
07:51 PM roycroft: i'm fine for a while, but i'm starting to put a timeline together for my cnc router
08:30 PM roycroft: woo hoo
08:30 PM roycroft: new clickspring video!
08:30 PM roycroft: he's on a roll
09:04 PM XXCoder: yep, it wasnt captioned so i havent watched it yet
09:05 PM XXCoder: aw still isnt
09:12 PM roycroft: it doesn't need to be
09:12 PM roycroft: it's not narrated
09:12 PM XXCoder: oh
09:12 PM XXCoder: watching now
09:13 PM roycroft: uri tuchman also has a new video
09:13 PM roycroft: he got a new lathe
09:13 PM XXCoder: linjk? might be good
09:13 PM roycroft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-QJ1WCDMG0
09:13 PM roycroft: he's quite the character
09:13 PM XXCoder: thanks
09:14 PM roycroft: i like him, but if you don't i would not be surprised
09:14 PM XXCoder: its fine either way, sometimes I just cant stand guy or editing style
09:14 PM XXCoder: i love lawyer guy, but I lothe the editing
09:18 PM XXCoder: ie zoom constantly changes
09:20 PM XXCoder: lovely clickspring video, though watched some of it months ago
09:20 PM XXCoder: captions is recommmmmmanded
09:20 PM roycroft: he must have a proper shed now
09:20 PM roycroft: since he has larger machines
09:20 PM XXCoder: he had a video tour of shop
09:20 PM XXCoder: its tiny
09:20 PM roycroft: yes, but that machine is not
09:21 PM roycroft: i finally joined his patreon a while back
09:21 PM XXCoder: its something you can fit on small table
09:21 PM roycroft: the notifications of videos are slow to come
09:21 PM XXCoder: not too large.
09:21 PM roycroft: but anyway, i see he has over 5000 patrons now
09:21 PM XXCoder: I use RSS. much faster
09:21 PM roycroft: he should be able to pay his bills from patreon alone, even though they keep a big chunk of the revenue
09:21 PM roycroft: and his youtube royalties are probably as much again
09:21 PM XXCoder: probably. i dont guess how much income he needs to live on
09:22 PM roycroft: well he's in australia, which is a very expensive place to live
09:22 PM roycroft: and he was just turning a big disc of sterling silver on a lathe
09:22 PM roycroft: chunks of silver like that cost a lot of money
09:22 PM roycroft: i noticed he is very good at collecting every bit of swarf
09:23 PM XXCoder: yeah
09:23 PM roycroft: but he uses expensive materials in his work
09:23 PM roycroft: so he has to have a decent size budget for that
09:25 PM roycroft: you should watch some of uri's other videos before you judge him too eclectic to handle :)
09:25 PM XXCoder: true though he probably has job workj at too
09:25 PM fdarling: abetusk: I am familiar with the internals of engraving laser electrical cabinets
09:25 PM roycroft: although he does have a pigeon fetish that shows up in most of his videos
09:25 PM XXCoder: roy hm you mean patreon for clickspring or uri
09:26 PM roycroft: clickspring
09:26 PM roycroft: i should probably support uri too
09:26 PM XXCoder: ok. lol that "fetish" reminds me of other channek, you might love that channel. lemme get link
09:26 PM roycroft: but i don't so far
09:26 PM roycroft: i only have so much patreon money to spread around
09:26 PM XXCoder: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThomasJohnsonAntiqueFurnitureRestoration
09:26 PM XXCoder: I LOVE that channel.
09:26 PM roycroft: i like thomas johnson
09:27 PM XXCoder: even when I wait weeks for captions
09:27 PM roycroft: my only problm with him is that his videos are so long
09:27 PM roycroft: and i rarely have time to watch them
09:27 PM roycroft: i wish he would break them up into shorter segments sometimes, but then there would be the issue of loss of continuity
09:27 PM XXCoder: uri jokes etc reminds me of that 3d pen guy
09:28 PM roycroft: i like how uri can do so much with so little
09:28 PM roycroft: and i like how he likes to "decorate" everything
09:28 PM roycroft: i would not necessarily want my living room to be full of his engravings
09:28 PM roycroft: but i think it's cool that he does what he does
09:29 PM XXCoder: i do wish to have one of clickspring works
09:29 PM XXCoder: hm captions cuts out
09:29 PM roycroft: uri's accent is very thick
09:29 PM XXCoder: its not autocaptions
09:29 PM roycroft: and the first half of that video is in verse
09:30 PM roycroft: sort of
09:37 PM XXCoder: seems vaccine, in least pfier, seem to be working for 5-11
09:37 PM XXCoder: which is awesome. because schools is serious diease cenetrs
09:39 PM roycroft: my county just ordered freezer trailers to use as auxiliary morgues
09:39 PM roycroft: we may have reached peak infection from the delta variant
09:39 PM roycroft: but things are not looking good
09:40 PM XXCoder: hope so in least, because peak impiles no more rising
09:40 PM roycroft: i hope that young children can start getting vaccinated soon
09:40 PM XXCoder: but yeah. southeast is getting hammered very heavily
09:40 PM roycroft: it may be the end of october or so when it's approved for them
09:40 PM roycroft: people around here are mostly behaving well
09:41 PM roycroft: i'd say that a higher percentage are masked in stores and the like than last spring
09:41 PM XXCoder: here its pretty pretty much all masked
09:41 PM roycroft: but there are still too many who refuse to mask up and refuse to get vaccinated
09:41 PM XXCoder: deaf expo is being planned next year. im not going.
09:42 PM XXCoder: i always went each year but not next one. (2020 was cancelled)
09:42 PM roycroft: it may be ok by then
09:42 PM XXCoder: maybe, but im not risking life till its overall gone
09:42 PM XXCoder: of myself or others
09:43 PM roycroft: i'd recommend not making decisions to go or not go right now
09:43 PM roycroft: but instead, wait until closer to the event and see how things are going then
09:43 PM XXCoder: i suppose. maybe my dizzyness will go away then too
09:46 PM roycroft: i'm hoping we can have a country fair next summer
09:46 PM roycroft: we were going to have a september event, but had to cancel it due to the case spike
10:01 PM XXCoder: roy hope you can
10:22 PM roycroft: i hope we all can get back to something approaching our normal lives by next summer
10:22 PM XXCoder: yeah
10:26 PM abetusk: fdarling, do you have any idea what the protocol something like ezcad uses to communicate with those cabinets? Alternatively, do you know what it takes to drive those galvos?
10:28 PM fdarling: abetusk: it uses a proprietary protocol over USB. The galvos aren't driven by their board, the board speaks XY2-100 to the galvo head, which has it's own internal controller of the galvos
10:29 PM fdarling: abetusk: HALaser offers a BeagleBone based controller that can be used as an alternative
10:29 PM fdarling: abetusk: Mesa cards technically can speak XY2-100, however it's not implemented in LinuxCNC
10:29 PM fdarling: abetusk: HALaser also offers a card that can directly control "analog" galvos, but people don't usually have those and have to go that route
10:31 PM fdarling: my engraving laser has a BJJCZ LMCV4-FIBER-M controller in it, that's what you're seeing in those photos
10:35 PM roycroft: so it looks like canada just spent $300 on an election that will change nothing
10:35 PM roycroft: they really are trying to be like the usa :)
10:36 PM XXCoder: fun
10:36 PM roycroft: california just spent $300 million on an election that changed nothing
10:36 PM XXCoder: yup