PathPilot for Non-Tormach Machines?

[SCzEngrgGroup]

At one point, it was possible to order a PathPilot disc from Tormach, buy a Mesa card, and get it running on non-Tormach machines. Then, apparently, Tormach started requiring a Tormach machine S/N to purchase the software (arguably in violation of the LinuxCNC license). More recently, I've heard that they will again sell the software for non-Tormach machines (I think I heard they were selling it for $100), but find nothing about that on the website. Does anyone know for sure what the current status is?

Regards,
Ray L.

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[GLCarlson]

From the Tormach website today:

https://www.tormach.com/store/index....show&ref=35246

PP restore disk, purchase requirements:

"PCNC Serial Number*

This product is available to new or existing PCNC owners only."

From the Pathpilot FAQ:
https://www.tormach.com/product-faqs...nmachine-owner

"Can I get PathPilot for my non-Tormach machine?

PathPilot upgrade kits are intended for Tormach Machine Controllers only. At this time we are not offering PathPilot for use with third party machines, converted mills, or homemade CNC machines. "

The confusion may be over the use of a Tormach controller. Early on, Tormach wanted to sell PP only if bundled with the controller hardware. Tormach then revised that to say that while they'd sell PP to a Tormach owner, if the owner wanted to use his own controller hardware Tormach would not provide controller hardware support. I had that specific conversation when I moved from Mach3 to PP a couple years ago (roughly a year post PP launch).

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Hmmmm.... Seems like there are conflicting stories out there. Someone else just told me they were able, not very long ago, to purchase the CD without providing a S/N for $115. Sounds like it may take a call to Tormach to get a clear answer. Perhaps several, since I get the impression what answer you get depends on who you talk to. Perhaps they have an un-advertised policy of selling to non-Tormach owners, but only when they ask the right person.

I'll see what I can find out and report back...

Regards,
Ray L.

[GLCarlson]

The restore CD is 30 bucks according to the website. 115 is the price for a combo with a card. That may be an accident of pricing.

Seems to me that Tormach would be crazy not to sell PP to all comers. With or without a machine. Why should that matter? It's a product. Mach3 became a defacto standard across a huge range of machines. PP has the same potential. And it's branded. So why would one NOT sell a branded-to-Tormach, good performing product based on open architecture (and, as noted, arguably should be available)? Upsides, great. Downsides, damn few to none. By all means, tell non-Tormach owners it's guaranteed for ten seconds or ten inches of machine travel, whichever comes first, and totally unsupported without a serial number. (That serial number should be worth something). But beyond that- what possible reason exists for not selling PP to anyone who wants it?

Call Tormach.

[Steve303]

The restore CD is 30 bucks according to the website. 115 is the price for a combo with a card. That may be an accident of pricing.

Seems to me that Tormach would be crazy not to sell PP to all comers. With or without a machine. Why should that matter? It's a product. Mach3 became a defacto standard across a huge range of machines. PP has the same potential. And it's branded. So why would one NOT sell a branded-to-Tormach, good performing product based on open architecture (and, as noted, arguably should be available)? Upsides, great. Downsides, damn few to none. By all means, tell non-Tormach owners it's guaranteed for ten seconds or ten inches of machine travel, whichever comes first, and totally unsupported without a serial number. (That serial number should be worth something). But beyond that- what possible reason exists for not selling PP to anyone who wants it?

Call Tormach.

I could not agree more. You'd think Tormach would love to hear people say I own a XXXX mill but I use "Tormach Path Pilot" to control it I am sure they could sell disks for the same price as Mach3.

Steve

[yodaddy]

Tormach is still selling PathPilot to non-Tormach customers. I purchased it last week for $100 + $18 shipping. I didn't see it listed anywhere on their site, but found it was available when they wouldn't sell me the PP+card combo. Call Tormach and ask for item # 36035

Now, to get this working with a Mesa 5i25 on my mill ....

[GLCarlson]

Tormach is still selling PathPilot to non-Tormach customers. I purchased it last week for $100 + $18 shipping. I didn't see it listed anywhere on their site, but found it was available when they wouldn't sell me the PP+card combo. Call Tormach and ask for item # 36035

Now, to get this working with a Mesa 5i25 on my mill ....

Tormach has a secret menu!!! And, I think, rightly so. After a bit more thought, I retract my position that Tormach should encourage the spread of PP without limit. Here are further comments on that.

Making PP available to Tormach owners at a discount to encourage migration is a rational marketing strategy. Tormach wants users operating Tormach's latest software to maximize performance and simplify support. Tormach machine, Tormach software. So far, so good.

Making the product available to non-Tormach owners is consistent with the public nature of Linux, as long as the list price of the software is in the same range as similar products or product enhancements. A Mach4 hobby license is $200. Mach3 is $175. An "industrial" Mach4 license is $1400. In all cases, M4 is tied to a controller PC serial number (not so with PP so far as I know), but can be used/customized to an arbitrary machine . Analogously, Tormach has customized LinuxCNC to its machines, and a modest charge for the enhancements is reasonable. The enhanced software can be purchased, albeit with effort. Again, so far so good.

So why make that public/open option hard to find? Tormach's problem may well be that porting (and necessarily further modifying) PP to non-Tormach machines will create brand confusion and potential for reputational damage as derived code multiplies but is still called "Pathpilot" generically. Tormach has no ability nor any responsibility to support such versions or machines, and quite clearly says so. Regardless, the perceived responsibility will exist, especially in situations where a downstream purchaser buys a non-Tormach machine running "Pathpilot-but not really".

One of Tormach's key differentiators from competition, and one if its key success factors, is Tormach's reputation for customer support. Tormach could -probably will- face damage to its reputation for support when derived and modified software -still showing the Pathpilot splash screen- fails on a third party machine and Tormach rationally refuses any support.

Unrestricted distribution of PP also raises a significant strategic issue for Tormach: is Tormach a hardware or software company?

Tormach's dilemma is how to meet its obligations stemming from the use of LinuxCNC as a kernal for PP while mitigating -or ideally completely avoiding- a perception of potentially unlimited obligation to support "not-really-PathPilot" on non-Tormach machines. A self-inflicted wound stemming from the choice to use LinuxCNC as the kernel for PP, but a very rational and strategic decision for a hardware company that wanted to be independent of third party controller software. Writing a Tormach-owned alternate to LinuxCNC was probably beyond Tormach's resources.

Creating a very clear class of unsupported software (not tied to a machine serial number, not advertised or easily found) is a way to manage the resulting problem, though not an entirely satisfactory one.

On reflection, this is a case where the secret menu appears to make sense.

[mountaindew]

At one point, it was possible to order a PathPilot disc from Tormach, buy a Mesa card, and get it running on non-Tormach machines. Then, apparently, Tormach started requiring a Tormach machine S/N to purchase the software (arguably in violation of the LinuxCNC license). More recently, I've heard that they will again sell the software for non-Tormach machines (I think I heard they were selling it for $100), but find nothing about that on the website. Does anyone know for sure what the current status is?

Regards,
Ray L.

Couple years ago I remember the purchase of PP "about $30" was worded like I was buying a printed manual, distro disk and the program was free. It did have a registered trade mark name that was it. The purchased of the mesa card showed as a separate transaction for about $115.00.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Tormach is still selling PathPilot to non-Tormach customers. I purchased it last week for $100 + $18 shipping. I didn't see it listed anywhere on their site, but found it was available when they wouldn't sell me the PP+card combo. Call Tormach and ask for item # 36035

Now, to get this working with a Mesa 5i25 on my mill ....

Thanks! I'll give that a try.

Regards,
Ray L.

[shred]

It's not in Tormach's best interest to enable clone and bargain-basement machine makers with better control software. How many eBay-Special CNCs come with copies of Mach 3 that are actually paid up? Probably about as many as come with legitimate copies of Windows, which my guess is nearly zero.

Second people will call them for support and it takes time and people and thus money to determine they aren't Tormach machine owners and hang up on them politely.

Enabling the odd hobbyist to use PP is not much of a threat, so allowing that is not much of an issue.

[kstrauss]

I agree that distributing Pathpilot for non-Tormach machines is not in Tormach's best interests. However, they chose to make a deal with the Devil -- open source software -- and they now have little choice regarding making it available. I believe that they could have trademarked the splash screen (did they?) which would mean that it could be freely distributed but without their name on the product. Better legal minds than I can probably provide a more authoritative opinion on that aspect.

[SomeWhatLost]

technically, they only need to distribute any changes they made to the OSS bit, anything they wrote themselves is theirs to treat as proprietary as they would like...
assuming they wrote anything themselves...
but if they did, and they withhold that, it could effectively "break" any usefulness of PP on any non-tormach approved platform...

[bill south]

Hey Folks;
Can someone point me to the thread that addresses setting up PP for a novakon (or similar) machine. I can't seem to locate it!
Many thanks.
\Bill

[Steve303]

I think this is the thread you are looking for.

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/novako...8-tormach.html

Steve

[TurboStep]

Hey Folks;
Can someone point me to the thread that addresses setting up PP for a novakon (or similar) machine. I can't seem to locate it!
Many thanks.
\Bill

Doesn't Novakon provide a usable machine software???
Step

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Doesn't Novakon provide a usable machine software???
Step

Of course, they do - Mach3. But, like Tormach, many of us want something better. Personally, for the last 5 years I've been using a KFlop with a CNC Controller app I wrote myself. But, I'm looking at alternatives before I decide whether to do version 2.0 of my app, or move on to something else. PathPilot is on my list of alternatives, and it appears to be available so why not? By all reports, it's a decent solution.

Regards,
Ray L.

[mountaindew]

Of course, they do - Mach3. But, like Tormach, many of us want something better. Personally, for the last 5 years I've been using a KFlop with a CNC Controller app I wrote myself. But, I'm looking at alternatives before I decide whether to do version 2.0 of my app, or move on to something else. PathPilot is on my list of alternatives, and it appears to be available so why not? By all reports, it's a decent solution.

Regards,
Ray L.

Change to this control software was a noticeable improvement in my machines performance and overall ease of use. I found this control software straightforward to setup and maintain. Also the process to load code, setup tool tables, machine offsets and track machine state is very straight forward and almost simple. The groups of people on this project both linuxcnc and the PP interface designers should be happy with their work.

[yodaddy]

Tormach has a secret menu!!! And, I think, rightly so. After a bit more thought, I retract my position that Tormach should encourage the spread of PP without limit. Here are further comments on that.

Making PP available to Tormach owners at a discount to encourage migration is a rational marketing strategy. Tormach wants users operating Tormach's latest software to maximize performance and simplify support. Tormach machine, Tormach software. So far, so good.

Making the product available to non-Tormach owners is consistent with the public nature of Linux, as long as the list price of the software is in the same range as similar products or product enhancements. A Mach4 hobby license is $200. Mach3 is $175. An "industrial" Mach4 license is $1400. In all cases, M4 is tied to a controller PC serial number (not so with PP so far as I know), but can be used/customized to an arbitrary machine . Analogously, Tormach has customized LinuxCNC to its machines, and a modest charge for the enhancements is reasonable. The enhanced software can be purchased, albeit with effort. Again, so far so good.

So why make that public/open option hard to find? Tormach's problem may well be that porting (and necessarily further modifying) PP to non-Tormach machines will create brand confusion and potential for reputational damage as derived code multiplies but is still called "Pathpilot" generically. Tormach has no ability nor any responsibility to support such versions or machines, and quite clearly says so. Regardless, the perceived responsibility will exist, especially in situations where a downstream purchaser buys a non-Tormach machine running "Pathpilot-but not really".

One of Tormach's key differentiators from competition, and one if its key success factors, is Tormach's reputation for customer support. Tormach could -probably will- face damage to its reputation for support when derived and modified software -still showing the Pathpilot splash screen- fails on a third party machine and Tormach rationally refuses any support.

Unrestricted distribution of PP also raises a significant strategic issue for Tormach: is Tormach a hardware or software company?

Tormach's dilemma is how to meet its obligations stemming from the use of LinuxCNC as a kernal for PP while mitigating -or ideally completely avoiding- a perception of potentially unlimited obligation to support "not-really-PathPilot" on non-Tormach machines. A self-inflicted wound stemming from the choice to use LinuxCNC as the kernel for PP, but a very rational and strategic decision for a hardware company that wanted to be independent of third party controller software. Writing a Tormach-owned alternate to LinuxCNC was probably beyond Tormach's resources.

Creating a very clear class of unsupported software (not tied to a machine serial number, not advertised or easily found) is a way to manage the resulting problem, though not an entirely satisfactory one.

On reflection, this is a case where the secret menu appears to make sense.

When Tormach wouldn't sell me the PP+card combo I asked why not, but they didn't respond other than to tell me I could purchase PP alone. Your analysis is the most probable explanation as to why they don't want their 'name' on 3rd party machines.