The Norwegian The LinuxCNC +developer gathering 2024 is over. It was a great and productive +weekend, and I am sad that it is over.
+ +Regular readers probably still remember what LinuxCNC is, but her +is a quick summary for those that forgot? LinuxCNC is a free software +system for numerical control of machines such as milling machines, +lathes, plasma cutters, routers, cutting machines, robots and +hexapods. It eats G-code and produce motor movement and other changes +to the physical world, while reading sensor input.
+ +I am not quite sure about the total head count, as not all people +were present at the gathering the entire weekend, but I believe it was +close to 10 people showing their faces at the gathering. The "hard +core" of the group, who stayed the entire weekend, were two from +Norway, two from Germany and one from England. I am happy with the +outcome from the gathering. We managed to wrap up a new stable +LinuxCNC release 2.9.3 and even tested it on real hardware within +minutes of the release. The release notes for 2.9.3 are still being +written, but should show up on on the project site in the next few +days. We managed to go through around twenty pull requests and merge +then into either the stable release (2.9) or the development branch +(master). There are still around thirty pull requests left to +process, so we are not out of work yet. We even managed to +fix/improve a slightly worn lathe, and experiment with running a +mechanical clock using G-code.
+ +The evening barbeque worked well both on Saturday and Sunday. It +is quite fun to light up a charcoal grill using compressed air. Sadly +the weather was not the best, so we stayed indoors most of the +time.
+ +This gathering was made possible partly with sponsoring from both +Redpill Linpro, +Debian and +NUUG Foundation, and we are +most grateful for the support. I would also like to thank the local +school for lending us some furniture, and of course the rest of the +members of the organizers team, Asle and Bosse, for their countless +contributions. The gathering was such success that we want to do it +again next year.
+ +We plan to organize the next Norwegian LinuxCNC developer gathering +at the end of June next year, the weekend Friday 27th to Sunday 29th +of June 2025. I recommend you reserve the dates on your calendar +today. Other related communities are also welcome to join in, for +example those working on systems like FreeCAD and opencamlib, as I am +sure we have much in common and sharing experiences would be very +useful to all involved. We are of course looking for sponsors for +this gathering already. The total budget for this gathering was +around NOK 25.000 (around EUR 2.300), so our needs are quite modest. +Perhaps a machine or tools company would like to help out the free +software manufacturing community by sponsoring food, lodging and +transport for such gathering?
+