Tormach PCNC 1100

I am contemplating buying a Tormach mill. Is there any Tormach owner in the South East who would be prepared to let me have a look at their machine and discuss any shipping and assembly issues

Welcome to the forum Peter,

Neil

I know an owner in Suffolk if that is any good ?

There is another in Cambridge area , I expect he will see this thread.

J

You may also want to contact Bob who has recently got one, pics in his album and see this thread, not sure where he is

Edited By JasonB on 16/12/2014 07:38:38

Bob's in Manchester.

Thanks for all these replies. I had rather hoped that there would be someone who lived a little closer to West London!

Just spotted this post so signed up for the Forum to reply.

Peter, I'm the one in Suffolk John mentioned, and you're welcome to visit and have a chat the Tormach if you like.

Thanks Peter. I didn't see your message until recently. I have sent you a PM.

I have an 1100 bought it in 2013, very happy with it. I'm in Bicester north Oxfordshire. You are welcome to come take a look.

How many of you guys are going over to Path Pilot? I have just ordered the upgrade for my mill. $80 + $7 for the software disc.

Edited By Bob Rodgerson on 27/03/2015 21:52:04

Peter,

I imported mine last April/May.If you need any advice re-shipping just shout up. I used a company in Southampton who acted as my import agents and they were great I think they were called ACC or AAC but I can give you contact details.

Regards,

Bob.

Phew, that's a relief, given that I recommended it.

I bought my PCNC1100 in early 2009, transported by ACC Shipping in Gravesend. I expect I will upgrade to PathPilot at some point. However, my controller box will also need upgrading so the cost is not trivial. Mach3 is ok, but does have some issues and the screens are rather muddled. A big hole in Mach3 is 4th axis continuous machining; it gets its underwear in a right knot when it comes to feedrates.

Andrew

Not wanting to get into Linux / EMC / windows / Mach3 arguments here but before jumping ship to Path pilot check out some underlying issues that Linux CNC has had for ages.

The main problem with LinixCNC is that it's run by a committee of programmers and not machinists.

Even when something is pointed out to them they won't accept if IF THEY don't deem it important.

One case in point was trajectory planning, where it looks ahead for the next moves. Basically it didn't work. Steve Blackmore banged on about this for literally years onto deaf ears. So he then made two video's of the same part, same code, one run in M3 and one in Linux CNC and you could see the difference. He was then accused of fudging the results !! Nothing was done.

Now when Tormach, who I have immense respect for, did their homework their programmer altered this and it now works. Under the open source licence agreement this was then passed to Linux CNC. Now because i don't use this program I can't comment if it has made it into the latest release ? It's in Path Pilot but not sure about Linux CNC which in this context doesn't matter. This was just mentioned to show how the committee work.

Another big 'bug' [ or is it a feature ? ] in Linux CNC is if you break a tool, you can't jog away, change the tool, set the new offset and go back and continue machining. You have to re-start from line 1.

Been pointed out to them many times. Les Newall of Sheetcam fame has altered his so it works and again passed the code on but the committee do not think this point is important.

Now the crux of the whole post - I do not know if Path Pilot is able to do this so well worth asking before you jump ship if your programs are more that 10 lines long.

I think that you'll find that there is "LinuxCNC" and "Machinekit.io".

One (the former) is run *very* conservatively, and the other is more "bleeding edge". Both have their position in this world.

But I think the real story is *why* Tormach went away from Mach 3/4 to LinuxCNC-based code.

Do you know the real (probably unpublished) reason? I certainly don't.

(I also don't know if PathPilot is running on LinuxCNC or MachineKit; Tormach contracted Rob Ellenburg (sp?) to re-work the trajectory planner, and it is in both the bleeding edge and the latest pre-releases for the next stable version of LinuxCNC)

Hindsight is always 20/20 -

John S [ the good looking one ]

Can't really get into conversations over LinuxCNC as not used it for a mill or lathe so no experience but the trajectory planner 'bug' has been in since day one but they would not believe it was a problem.

It took Tormach to get this sorted on their time and their dollar so not really hindsight when you have known of a problem for a while.

I thought Tormach were a little harsh over their opinion of Mach3 that they published in their white paper having hitched their horse to it for many years and it enabled them to get where they are today.

Having said that it's uncanny how the layout of the tabbed screens in Path Pilot follows Mach so closely Still could do with some work on the main screens though. Designed for touch screens but has a start button twice the size of the stop button which is buried in a nest of other small buttons ??

John S [ the ugly one ]

Edited By John Stevenson on 28/03/2015 20:30:27

Hi the JohnS who should be asleep at the moment;

My main takeaway is that LinuxCNC and Mach are following the usual high-tech cat and mouse game, and we all benefit.

If anyone looks at where we are from say 5 years ago, progress on all fronts is obvious.

As to Tormach funding the trajectory planer work; I believe Rob had started this work, and that Rob was contracted to "make it happen - now".

I've done the same thing with open source projects; I've in the past contracted in people, and have accepted contracts from a certain military south me here in Canada to write and publish open source (all proceeds went to my employer, believe me). I think that you'll find that this happens quite a bit. I had also been offered donations from companies who had benefited from my open source work, out of the blue. (for the record, also declined, as it would have gone into the collective pot, so to speak, and the paperwork would have been horrible)

I'm awaiting my "BeagleBone Black" with which I'll run MachineKit on - it has cleared customs and should be delivered any day now. I ordered it with a parallel port breakout card, to drive a Gecko G540, to relieve another computer which will get a Mesa 5i25 card and ... (the story continues, somehow)

Changed days now, when you can run a fantastic CNC system with a computer about the size of a credit card!

JohnS (the one who had better get back to moving boxes/books/desks/filing cabinets/etc as we are nearing the end of a house renovation, and who wants to get back into the workshop)

As a lot of you know I imported my Tormach in May/June 2014. At that time I was working offshore in the North Sea on a regular two weeks on two weeks off rotation. I Arranged the import with the same company that Andrew did, they were very good and I was able to track the whereabouts of my shipment from Tormachs works to Southampton.

You can track virtual any ship in the world using the AIS website. Given that my mill was being shipped on the "Dresden Express" I was able to track the ship through the Panama Canal up the Eastern seaboard of the USA calling in at various ports until it arrived at Halifax Nova Scotia where my mill was loaded then watch it's arrival in Southampton a few days after it left Canada.

Unfortunately and typically by sods law I was offshore when the mill arrived at my home. My son in law and son dragged the three large packages into the workshop to wait my arrival. It took two days to unpack and check everything and at the end of it the workshop was absolutely bursting at the seams and it was apparent to me that I had underestimated just how much room the mill was going to take.

Prior to ordering the mill I sold my Tom Senior mill to generate some much needed floor space, I also cut a partition wall between the motor cycle and machine shop areas so that I would have access to the workshop with a Workshop Crane.

The main problem I had with building the machine up was a severe lack of space to manoeuvre around it as I built it up and the lack of room for my workshop crane. However despite this I built the machine up without any further difficulties, following the well written Tormach instructions. If nothing else once built up the mill confirmed just how big a foot print the machine has. One thing prospective buyers should be aware of is that the machine has to sit away from a wall at the back of the machine to make room for the Y axis Stepper motor.

Because the workshop was in such a mess I had no option but to completely re-arrange everything. Anyone who has had to do this will know just what it entails. Tons of stock materials collected over a lifetime in the hobby had to be shifted from my workbench/storage before I could move it out of the machine shop area into the "Dirty"end of the workshop. Once I had this done I then made couple of trolleys for my manual mill and lathe. Doing this made a huge difference because I could move the machines about and find the best position for them. All of this took a long time and before I knew where I was it was December 2014. At last things were beginning to look up and retirement from the offshore industry in December 2014 gave me more time to get things rolling.

I next made a new storage and workbench area in the workshop for the Mini Lathe and my bench drill. This further tidied the place up and with about another 60 ft. of shelving put up I was finally able to store everything that had been piled up all over the workshop.

While working offshore I read up on G-Codes and I tried to teach myself how to make 3D drawings. I chose Turbo Cad which , unfortunately, I could not get on with it and had to totally re-think which software to choose. I have AutoCad lite and can manage 2D drawing very well but could not justify buying a licence for the full licence that would allow me to draw 3D. I was beginning to think I would never get the mill up and running (other than to run Tormach's test programme).

After a difficult time trying to justify buying yet another software licence I decided that if I was to get up and running I would have to get some software that suited me. I had heard that Iron Cad was a good piece of software and that results can be achieved quickly so I went for it. I found that after just a few hours I was able to come up with some half decent results.

Because my main use for the machine will be in producing small IC engines and full size motorcycle parts I drew a simple cover, something that would be typically used to cover the valve timing gears of a small motor cycle engine.

With that done I then had to try and convert my drawing into a CNC programme. I have Sprut Cam as my CAM software and I have so far found this relatively easy to use.. There are plenty of tutorials on the Tormach websites to guide you through producing a programme in Sprut Cam and there is a pretty extensive , though poorly translated, manual on the installation disc.

I finally put the data through the post processor and came up with a CNC programme for a part on Friday.

Last night, at long last, I loaded up the programme and after a couple of false starts got the machine running cutting air. The sense of achievement and relief after such a long period between receipt of the mill and finally getting something of my own design out was great. I now know that I haven't bought something that I won't be able to use.

There was one fly in the ointment though, I had to stop the programme running after about 8 minutes because I noticed that the automatic oiler wasn't working. nIt was too late to investigate but I will investigate the problem. I will also have a go at changing the feeds because they are conservative to say the least and I want to speed up the cutting time for the part.

Once I get the oiler sorted out and get the feeds and speeds to my liking I will take a few pictures of the results of my efforts.

Couple of things in regards to linuxcnc.

The current release 2.6 still has the 1 segment look ahead. It needs to be able to stop by the end of the next segment. This - for the most part works perfectly fine for a lot of machining operations. Where it falls down is lots of short segments running at high speed. It wasn't a 'bug' that could just be fixed if a developer took a few minutes to look at it. That trajectory planner worked as designed. (no acc/vel violations - just slower when fed short segment gcode.)

To give you an idea of the work to 'fix' this 'bug' rob took over a year of writing code to get the trajectory planner where it is now. (which is pretty darn awesome BTW - thank you rob and tormach)

This improvement is in the next release of linuxcnc (2.7) and also in tormachs pathpilot

As far as jog while paused. This is also not an easy fix. The script that les had was really a run from line solution. Run from line in linuxcnc works pretty darn good. Break a tool - stop the program, change tool, check tool length then run from line. For those would like some jog while pause functionality - there is a 'moveoff' hal component also in 2.7 that is a stop gap until a final solution comes out.

Tormach posted its webinar recently - there is also some Q/A videos also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEQqcCl5ids

sam

Sam,

Thank you for that current update.

Nice to see that Tormach with their hands on experience are now pushing Linuxcnc into a direction it should have gone years ago if only the developers had listened to people who actually used the program.

Ironically enough in a recent conversation with Art Fenarty, the original author of Mach 3, he mentioned that he'd expected something like Path Pilot 4 years earlier given that a lot of Mach3 was from the original NIST code.

Perhaps now that users have seen Tormach's proprietary screens then the mainstream Linuxcnc 'might' have something that resembles a machine controller screen instead of, well don't really know what to say ? A development white paper idea ?

Edited By John Stevenson on 30/03/2015 12:56:36