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I purchased one of these over the weekend to get an email today telling me he is out of stock and its going to be over 3 weeks before anymore are made, this isn't acceptable and I need something else asap.
http://diycnc.co.uk/cnc-boards-uniport-v3/
I did see this on ebay but what are the chances it comes with a plugin for mach3
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CNCUSB-MK1...cAAOSwT6pVziUD
open to any suggestions for boards within the uk
Look below it says in package "1 x 4 Axis USBCNC 2.1 Substitute MACH3 Interface Board"
If it does not have plugin its not as advertised and easily returned at their expense for full refund.
cos an ebay seller wouldn't lie...
All the time but pay with paypal and no problem getting refund, just a little inconvenient if you have cash flow problem.
id rather do research and not have a problem in the first place
Substitute doesn't explicitly mean "direct replacement" or "functionally identical", or even "acceptable replacement" it just means something used in place of something else
Andy_con - You need to understand exactly what you are looking at. Your first link was to a BOB. A BOB, in crude terms, is a tarted-up junction box. It takes the various input and output pins to/from the computer's parallel port and splits those into separate easy-to-connect terminals. OK, it does a little more than that by cleaning up signals (maybe) and isolating PC parallel port from nasty things that might happen on the output pins (via the opto-isolators) but conceptually - it's a junction box. Mach3 will be configured so that it knows which parallel port pin connects to which terminal on the BOB which carries which signal to which stepper driver using the built-in Mach3 configuration tools. You do not need any extra plug-in. Definitely not. One alternative from a known and trusted supplier is this.
Your second link is to an external motion control board. All references to Mach3 in that link are misleading, unless you read very carefully that it says "substitute Mach3...". It does not run with Mach3, it replaces it (and so, again, it does not need a Mach3 plug-in 'cos there ain't no Mach3 involved). It comes with its own control software that you install on the PC in place of Mach3, and that software plus the code that runs on the board itself between them do everything that Mach3 plus BOB do. So you don't need a BOB with it either.
There is a third option which is a motion controller which does work with Mach3, but which off-loads some of the processing from the PC and Mach3 to specialised hardware on the motion control card. Things like SmoothStepper and the CSMIO-IP/M fall into this category. These definitely do need plug-ins to work with Mach3, and the plug-ins are downloadable from the motion controller manufacturer website (although I would expect them to be provided with the hardware anyway). They may or may not also need some kind of BOB, depending on make and model.
Clearly, it's all a bit more complicated than this (and I haven't gone into reasons for going one way or the other) but as your first post was comparing apples with oranges, you need to check which fruit you really want to get!
Whats your budget?
ok thanks.
I'm aware of how things work I already have a denford triac cnc mill running ESS with a PMDX126.
other thread here
http://www.mycncuk.com/threads/9843-...Microrouter-V4
I'm guessing I didn't read the ebay link properly, I didn't realise it replaces mach3 all together, my bad.
I need a BoB to connect the ESS ive already ordered that's located within the UK. I want to get my router up and running asap