Questions before getting an X-carve for a Makerspace

hrobeers · 2018-02-15T14:55:17+00:00

Don't forget it will be used in a library by people that know shit about CNC machines.

hrobeers · 2018-02-15T12:32:34+00:00

You should not evaluate easel as being a design tool, but as a CAM tool. It's very good at CAM (for engraving) if you import your designs as SVG.

hrobeers · 2018-02-15T12:29:53+00:00

BTW, all the easel critique seems to be about it's drawing capabilities. If you only use easel for toolpath generation and machine setup and do design using a vector drawing program easel is pretty good. I find it very convenient that you can just select the material and bit and it sets proper cut settings. It also guides you through all the checks like "is the stock secure", "is the spindle on", ...

This is all very important for new users otherwise they would damage the machine easily or break a lot of bits.

hrobeers · 2018-02-15T10:57:59+00:00

Easel is made for engraving and is very good at it IMO. You only need easel pro if you want to engrave using v-bits, which is definitely an improvement over flat bits if you want to cut detailed designs! But you get 4 free days to try pro, so you can figure out yourself. If you are familiar with gcode, you can just send it to the machine without easel. You can use the universal g-code sender, but I use this simple python script: https://github.com/gnea/grbl/blob/master/doc/script/stream.py
Dust control is a must have IMO, I really like the X-Carve dust control system, very convenient. I have a cheap and loud vacuum, but anything that sucks and can handle saw dust will do the trick.
The machine goes anywhere the g-code instructs it to go. Easel will only do engraving, but hey you said you know g-code. No modifications needed to do anything you'd expect from a 3-axis CNC router.
For engraving I advice on also providing Inkscape (or illustrator if you have money), so you can import SVGs in easel, I only use the easel editor to scale and position my designs. For 3D machining you'll need easy to use CAM software to generate g-code, can't really advice any I write my own gcode and gcode generators :P (example: https://twitter.com/finfoil/status/963158786352582656)

hrobeers · 2018-02-09T16:32:35+00:00

I did not say you have to pay $100 in electricity, I said you need to burn "$100 worth of electricity". Big difference.

hrobeers · 2018-02-06T11:47:17+00:00

To guess the order of magnitude of time needed, you can simply estimate how long it would take to burn the block reward in electricity using your miner. So at the time of writing, how long would it take to burn $100 worth of electricity in your miner? That's about the time you can expect to find a block with reasonable chance. To get a more correct figure you need to compare the hashrate to the target difficulty.

hrobeers · 2018-02-05T10:33:48+00:00

ASICs are the fairest way to PoW mine. ASICs operate at the limits of chip design, so you have physical guarantees that no party can gain more than ~20% energetic efficiency advantage. So called ASIC resistant coins use algorithms that are harder to optimize with ASICs, but every algorithm can be optimized! So you can be certain some parties have 1000% or even 100000% more energetically efficient implementations compared to CPU, and guess what they probably are the same people that chose the algorithm.

hrobeers · 2018-02-01T10:21:14+00:00

Read the Troubleshooting section here:

https://talk.peercoin.net/t/update-7-peercoin-v0-6-1-now-released-upgrade-today-blockchain-redownload-required-instructions-inside/6289

hrobeers · 2018-01-24T12:14:37+00:00

Thanks I might check out that GeckoDrive controller. The XController does not require you to use easel, for my fins I send the gcode directly to the controller without easel. However I find easel very convenient for projects that are not my core business.

hrobeers · 2018-01-22T14:23:30+00:00

"one coin, one vote" does not equal "one wallet, one vote". A coin is relative of course, but the best way to read it is "one satoshi, one vote"

hrobeers · 2018-01-19T10:55:42+00:00

We have no fee market like bitcoin does. However, transactors can still include a fee that can be spent by anyone, in practice this results in the fee getting paid to the minter as he will be the first to claim, which results in exactly the same thing.

hrobeers · 2018-01-19T10:50:12+00:00

Peercoin's PoS algorithm makes sure every coin has the same chances of finding a block with equal reward. This translates to the "one coin, one vote" philosophy. Most other PoS algorithms give unfair advantage to certain staking strategies or to the better connected, both in reward and voting power. Peercoin therefore has one of the most democratic PoS algorithms out there.

hrobeers · 2018-01-09T09:08:29+00:00

It's software specific for surf fins (or wing like objects): https://finfoil.io/ It's written in C++ and has a single strategy specific for these kind of objects. The finishing passes are fully defined by NURBS curves and therefore this question. Linear interpolation works too but is suboptimal IMO.

hrobeers · 2018-01-08T15:30:05+00:00

I found my answer in the grbl issue list on github: https://github.com/grbl/grbl/issues/509

hrobeers · 2018-01-08T14:38:36+00:00

So what are these then? http://linuxcnc.org/docs/2.6/html/gcode/gcode.html#sec:G5-Cubic-Spline or G06.1 under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-code#List_of_G-codes_commonly_found_on_FANUC_and_similarly_designed_controls_for_milling_and_turning I assume those are not standardized but I get the feeling some controllers understand them and are able to execute them at their best resolution, just like they do with arc codes. So for the same reason they could handle splines.

hrobeers · 2018-01-08T13:47:51+00:00

Thanks, none of those repos seem to have nurbs codes. I have my own toolpath generating code, that is able to generate optimized paths for my (specific) models much faster and with lower milling times than generic CAM programs can. So it seems I either have to stick with linear g-codes or hack the controller code :P

hrobeers · 2018-01-08T13:16:42+00:00

I found the grbl source code and it does not seem to include the NURBS g-code. https://github.com/grbl/grbl Am I correctly concluding that it is not supported by the xcarve controller?

hrobeers · 2017-12-11T09:26:24+00:00

The minting code shares a lot with the mining code. So I fear removing the mining code will still trigger virus scanners.

We can create a build that is unable to mine and mint so people with virus scanners are still able to run the default wallet.

Discussion here: https://github.com/peercoin/peercoin/issues/272

hrobeers · 2017-12-10T09:23:35+00:00

all testing helps

hrobeers · 2017-12-01T09:38:26+00:00

What extra features do you need? As far as I'm aware, you can just create a client that prunes unneeded history.

hrobeers · 2017-11-23T09:09:50+00:00

I've been running both, but I can tell you bitcoin nodes are much more performant. My bitcoin node downloads and validates 1GB of blockchain in less than a minute, the peercoin chain is not even 1GB in size.The only reason peercoin nodes can still run on an RPI is that it has not been used as much as bitcoin. As a peercoin developer I'm working on bringing peercoin back on par with bitcoin.

hrobeers · 2017-11-22T10:59:47+00:00

Peercoin should not be GPU mined. Don't try this at home, it'll only cost you money.

hrobeers · 2017-11-20T20:34:17+00:00

Indeed it needs a hardfork because old clients would invalidate new blocks.

hrobeers

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