My first ever built CNC router.

[Doddy]

I looked up your suggestions of controllers and will take them into consideration, more so the UC300 as the AXBB is going over my budget. I see alot of Chinese ethernet controllers - would they be any good for budget reasons? Currently I have an old laptop given to me by a friend with a parallel port so I'm planning on installing Linux CNC just to get me going for now.

Thanks
Tim

I have one flavour of Chinese Ethernet motion controller - a Novosun NVEM 5 axis controller. Used it for a couple of years on one machine. Replaced with a UC300ETH. It's collected dust for the next couple of years as I bought a Mesa Ethernet controller for the Lathe (Lathes present a problem with control software which pushed me down a LinuxCNC route, which pushed me at the Mesa). All-in - around £500 extra because I DIDN'T want to use the NVEM. The NVEM work, on a good day, but I've had to modify stepper drivers to work reliably. There was all sorts of problems ensuring Mach3 and NVEM synced correctly - you might find for example that if you exit Mach3 (crash, etc) that you have to repower the machine to get the NVEM ready to accept the connection on restart.

My experience - I can afford to throw money at a problem to make the NVEM go-away (although its sat on a shelf, somewhere). For the price of a UC300ETH, and a parallel BoB, to me it's a no-brainer which to buy. Plus, I've kind of fallen in love with UCCNC rather than Mach3, so that's a more clear choice for me (the NVEM cannot be used with UCCNC... last I checked).

[Timatronics]

I have one flavour of Chinese Ethernet motion controller - a Novosun NVEM 5 axis controller. Used it for a couple of years on one machine. Replaced with a UC300ETH. It's collected dust for the next couple of years as I bought a Mesa Ethernet controller for the Lathe (Lathes present a problem with control software which pushed me down a LinuxCNC route, which pushed me at the Mesa). All-in - around £500 extra because I DIDN'T want to use the NVEM. The NVEM work, on a good day, but I've had to modify stepper drivers to work reliably. There was all sorts of problems ensuring Mach3 and NVEM synced correctly - you might find for example that if you exit Mach3 (crash, etc) that you have to repower the machine to get the NVEM ready to accept the connection on restart.

My experience - I can afford to throw money at a problem to make the NVEM go-away (although its sat on a shelf, somewhere). For the price of a UC300ETH, and a parallel BoB, to me it's a no-brainer which to buy. Plus, I've kind of fallen in love with UCCNC rather than Mach3, so that's a more clear choice for me (the NVEM cannot be used with UCCNC... last I checked).

Thanks for the information Doddy,

So regarding the UC300ETH, its not a complete package then, I need a separate BoB to work with it? Would it also work on LinuxCNC? I guess its not a real issue as UCCNC is pretty cheap.

Thanks
Tim