So I made the decision to use linuxcnc for the lathe. linux is quite a departure from windows, so its been a little bit of a learning curve so far. all the fancy drag and drop and double clicks have to be mostly typed in linux, so its been a challenge. Good thing is there are a ton of people who are willing to slug through it with me so in a way its kinda fun.
so far I have the linuxcnc (debian) loaded on the dell fx170, I ordered a memory card for it and of course I got the wrong orientation, it plugs in but I cant put the case cover back on. at this point thats OK, and it may be OK forever as this will be enclosed in a control box anyway.
I then loaded the arduino software on the linux, with that I pulled the toolerator3000.ino file from the makers site and compiled it, then loaded it into the arduino nano on the toolerator3000 pcba, so that is now complete.
I had to do a lot of backflips to finally get the toolerator run files onto the linuxcnc box, everystep required a prestep to allow the next step so each one was like its own little project, but the toolerator3000 hal file was compiled and loaded.
I ordered a MESA 7i76e i/o card this weekend. with that I will be able to configure the linuxcnc to talk to the stepper controllers, the vfd running the spindle, the axis stop switches, the auto oiler system, the spindle encoder, and the e-stop, plus 20 or so other things if I want door switches and such. really an economical way to combine a lot of functions.
I dont have a cabinet yet, so I may screw some din rails to a peice of plywood and start laying out the system and bringing up subsystems, I think the first will be to cycle the toolchanger, which is still the biggest unknown right now. Anyway, should be some pictures this week with some of the bringing together of components.