#GEAROTIC TO CNC USB CONTROLLER PC#

#GEAROTIC TO CNC USB CONTROLLER PC#

I know an ex colleague who has one of the early T-Tech machines with a parallel interface and it is controlled via an ISA card that has to be fitted in a contemporary PC running MS-DOS. T-Tech moved over to RS-232 about 20 yrs ago. I'm amazed that modern machines use parallel interfaces. I've learned a lot in the time I've been using these machines and it's very rare that I get a dud board and I don't have many tool failures. Also, there's no substitute for experience and this helps enormously because there are so many things that can go wrong during the whole process that can destroy a board. The key to success is to be milling small and simple boards on non standard dielectric on a regular basis and also to use it for other purposes like front panel design and making laminated tools etc. But I use mine for RF research/design using various exotic PCB materials and the boards are often very simple. End quote - All valid points and i think for general purpose FR4 boards (especially digital circuits with lots of PCB traces) it is false economy to use one of these machines today. Bear in mind these were EU and USA built specifically for PCB work.

Broken mill bits are another pain, you sit listening to the machine drone (plus vacuum and air compressor) for hours while you do other things only to realise the mill bit broke 10% of the way in. Even the slightest warp in your FR4 can destroy your results and leave you with multiple efforts. However they often needed a lot of attention to get the right results, particularly on larger boards. Quote -+1 to what Mike said, previously I've used LPKF and T-Tech milling machines and sometimes they work beautifully so you are can go from concept to PCB in a single day. Maybe something that interfaced directly with these cheap handheld MPGs

What I think is still missing is a standalone G-code to motion controller with sufficient inbuilt UI to do the stuff like zeroing and feed rate control - that's the only thing I ever do with Mach3's UI. I bought a smoothieboard a while ago but not tried it yet. There is other stuff out there now so their monopoly is gone. End quote - They really missed the boat on this - in the parallel port era they owned the market, if they'd done a reasonably priced USB to parallel interface to run all the existing parallel port devices (which could also have been a dongle for their SW) they could have totally cleaned up. I can't see how they have managed to sell it for THIS long. Quote from: Richard Crowley on September 25, 2014, 10:55:31 am - Rumor is that Newfangled Solutions is developing a completely new generation ('Mach4'?) and will raise the price an order of magnitude and drop Mach3 (US$175) Will an alternative/replacement emerge that will take up the market it for hobby-level users? Mach3 seems remarkably fiddly and amateurish. Desk CNC 3020 (or similar) accuracy and practicality for SMD PCB prototyping?

Gearotic to cnc usb controller