Laptop

[friolator]

I am weighing the pros and cons of MASSO vs Acorn for my small 4-axis mill rebuild. There is not a ton of space inside the unit and my intention is to keep it as self contained as possible. I want all the controls inside the existing control box, because the design is really nice and allows you to remove the box for easy testing on a bench. All cabling into and out of the box would be on connectors so it's much easier to work on. This setup keeps everything nicely self-contained and away from any coolant/dust/etc.

However, there is no way to fit an Acorn board, relay board, mini PC, power supplies, and 4 stepper drivers in the control box, unless the Mini PC isn't there and I use a laptop. This would heavily favor Centroid in my decision making process, because I happen to have two capable laptops here at work that aren't being used right now, and would be more than powerful enough to run CNC12. The mill also has a built-in laptop shelf on a swing arm because the original controls used a laptop.

Cost-wise, with a Mini PC, Pro software upgrade, etc, the two setups are about the same. If i remove the mini PC from the equation, the Centroid gets the edge because I already have a laptop.

Alternatively, while slightly more expensive, MASSO fits along with all the other stuff since it doesn't require the PC.

So how hard and fast is this no-laptop-no-support rule? I can't for the life of me fathom why a laptop that meets the CPU specs and has an ethernet port wouldn't be acceptable. I get that laptops have power saving options that could be problematic, but if this is powered by AC and not the battery, all that power saving stuff can be disabled in the BIOS or Windows.

[suntravel]

A properly setup laptop will do the job.

No macros with Masso, complete No-Go for me.

Uwe

[friolator]

I understand that a properly setup laptop will work, but everything I've read here says no support if you use a laptop. So how much of an issue is that?

I use a MASSO on my CNC router at home and the lack of macros hasn't been an issue. This setup is my first 4-axis though and I'm not sure whether macros would be necessary. So far on my machine at home, anything I needed to do that couldn't be done out of the box has been doable in CAM but again, this is a mill, not a router, and has a 4th axis. The other thing is that i might at some point go 5 axis, but that would depend on whether I can fit that onto the machine, I don't know that yet because it's all disassembled. MASSO has 5-axis support built in, but I'd need to move to an Acorn Six to get that with Centroid, no?

I kind of want to do this once so I can just use the machine!

[cnckeith]

we are trying to discourage laptop use since they sometimes have specialty bios settings often related to power savings (battery) that might interfere with cnc operation if they are not disabled. (" my centroid just went blank in the middle of the job!!!" ) if you are a newbie and not a PC guy editing the bios just adds an extra layer of confusion and trouble, and we can't support every laptop bios in the world and its just not good CNC machine tool practice to be using a laptop any ways, a good dedicated CNC PC is cheap these days. that being said yes you can use a laptop that meets the minimum pc specs required for CNC12 to run.

[friolator]

Understood - thanks. Yeah I get the issues with laptops but if you're using it in an always-plugged in, never going to sleep mode, it should be ok. I've built hundreds of PCs so no stranger to BIOS settings!

[ShawnM]

Understood - thanks. Yeah I get the issues with laptops but if you're using it in an always-plugged in, never going to sleep mode, it should be ok. I've built hundreds of PCs so no stranger to BIOS settings!

They're not BIOS settings, they are Windows settings.

[cnckeith]

Understood - thanks. Yeah I get the issues with laptops but if you're using it in an always-plugged in, never going to sleep mode, it should be ok. I've built hundreds of PCs so no stranger to BIOS settings!

They're not BIOS settings, they are Windows settings.

i've run into plenty laptops with bios settings for power savings such as controls for port / hd / screen / mouse / keypad etc etc sleep mode or even power save mode on cpu and graphics card (smoothing not working anyone?) its not all just windows or the laptop would be like any other computer.

[suntravel]

Keith is right some Laptops have power saving features in the BIOS.

But if you know what to do, no problem using a good Laptop for CNC.

Uwe

[friolator]

They're not BIOS settings, they are Windows settings.

They exist in both places. And not just for laptops -- We have plenty of server-grade machines here that allow you to alter some of these same settings at the hardware level. But it's understandably more common with laptops since they need to do whatever they can to reduce battery drain.

[Ken Rychlik]

Just a fyi, the lenovo m93p fits in the palm of your hand, is not very expensive, and has worked well on multiple systems. Good luck whatever you go with.