Hi,
 I am new to Mach, so please pardon my ignorance. I just got my Fireball Meteor (http://www.probotix.com/FireBall_Meteor_cnc_router/). It came with a probotix control box + Ubuntu box with EMC2 (older version of LinuxCNC). Ubuntu is connected to the probotix control box via LPT port.
 Meteor has 3 axis, and the Y axis has 2 steppers on each side of the machine.
I am looking to replace the Ubuntu box with Windows. Does anyone have experience running Fireball Meteor from Mach3 on Windows?

A bit about the project: I need to control the Meteor CNC from my custom interactive program - that is, I dont know ahead of time the commands and their timing, they will be determined on the fly as my program reads sensor input from the workspace. I am planningto generate g-codes dynamically from my app, then send them down on-by-one to Mach3 (going through documentation to figure out how that's done), and hope that Mach will handle sending g-codes to Probotix's LPT-based control box. so in short the chain is:
My App Generates-> G code command -> Mach Sends -> LPT -> Probotix control box -> CNC steppers


Any help/thoughts/pointers - highly appreciated.

Any takers? Knowing that its never been done is also a useful piece of info. I wont even try
Thanks,
Greg

Hi Greg,

Welcome to the forum.

Just my opinion…

Mach3 will drive your machine and Probotix give the setup details on their website but you must bear in mind that their preferred software relates to the CNC USB Motion Controller and not Mach3.

In general it would be better practice to completely compile your GCode before sending it to the machine as this will avoid any possible starts and stops in the resulting tool-path which could lead to poor edge / surface quality.

If I understand your thoughts correctly, I think you would be pioneering an un-tried method of Mach3 control which may or may not work as intended so you would have to expect a lot of ‘trial and error’ and maybe it would just not be worth the effort.

However, If we all gave up at the first hurdle there would be little innovation or invention so I think you should give it a try.

Tweakie.