LinuxCnc - I fell off the rails a bit

Hello All,
I’m kind of new to the this board. Here’s where I’m at on my MPCNC -

  1. Parts have been printed and assembled.
  2. Motors purchased and installed.
  3. Wiring is mostly done back to the main CPU.

What I’m wanting to do is connect/control via LinuxCnc. I’ve got the PC, LinuxCnc, the parallel port. Reading the boards I’ve purchased the Mesa Electronics 7i43H board and 2 daughter boards.

Where I’m stuck at is how to setup the boards and wire it all up. Is there someone out there with the steps to configure the 7i43 board and software and then some directions or a diagram on wiring it all to the motors? It looks like you a re supposed to load some software onto the 7i43 - then reset some switches and then wire it in. But the directions are very unclear.

From what I’ve read once I get the 7i43 setup and connected to the LinuxCnc it will provide a wiring map of what pins to what motor?

I’d be grateful to anyone who can provide some clarity.

Thanks,
Wilbert Best

That is new hardware to me, lets hope someone has tried it out and can chime in.

I have been reading up on LinuxCNC and wondering if I might use it some day. I watched My Heap’s video series and it really explains all the steps to get it going, but it still remains somewhat generic. He doesn’t examine the driver cards much, other that talking about the different ones available.

I’d be curious about what you come up with. For the time being, I’m ok with CNCjs for driving the machine and using the Archim board. It is great to have everything all set up and easy to connect to the controller with a USB cable to my raspberry pi. However, I am just not satisfied with CNCjs. There are things that I don’t need and things that don’t work as I want and I haven’t taken the time to fork it and tweak the UI to my liking. I’m still learning the ins and out.

I had done some work with the tinyG controller card. Chili Peppr works pretty cool. Just didn’t take the time to figure out the ins and outs to make it run the MPCNC, especially with the dual axes motors and the dual endstops

For the time being, I’m happy with what I have. But I do like the open source software and the amazing level of control you can get with LinuxCNC. Maybe it isn’t necessary at all, but I am curious for sure.

There are folks who have used it. Curious how @uthayne has done with his.

FWIW, cnc.js works better with grbl.

That’s what I understand. I haven’t gotten into the differences in the firmware base, other than noting that grbl is more CNC friendly out of the gate. I saw that there was no configured software for grbl for the MPCNC, so I didn’t explore it more. I haven’t gotten through the old posts on the forum enough to see what other firmware people have used and how that takes place.

Last month was the first time I did a custom configuration a 3D printer board. I managed to get my CR10s flashed correctly and working with the latest firmware, of course using someone else’s configuration data but making the changes rather than using an image. I had tried it several times before and couldn’t really spend the time understanding everything. Just getting a little more familiar with all this now.

As to the MPCNC firmware, that is something I would like to get more familiar with but I really should just spend my time making stuff rather than playing with the electronics. I have so much more to learn. Just always curious about other options, especially in open source software.

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Grbl is older, but still well maintained. It does support cnc and lasers well, if not better. Marlin supports more boards, like the archim. Marlin has some more advanced features, like mesh levelling. To get grbl to run on a Rambo, or Esp32 boards, the project gets forked, which is definitely harder to maintain.

This software/hardware pairing thing has not been this relevant to me for quite some time. I sure appreciate all the knowledge you share about these issues. I’m just going to keep plugging away and trying to figure this stuff out. All in all, these open source projects are just one of the tiny miracles that make my day!

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Hey @wbest, what have you decided on the LinuxCNC? I’m working on it this weekend but using an breakout board along with a driver board. I think I have all the parts I need, but time will tell.