DDSCV1.1 3 and 4 axis offline motion controller

[John S]

But what support do you get with the Chinese controller?
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A very good question and a very valid one.
This depends on controller.
If we are talking about the DSCV cheap controller then none, all the vendors want to do is take your money and pass the buck.
What will happen in time though is there will become a users self help forum or forums where people can share problems. This happens now over the internet with any product. I have just had problems with my central heating boiler and all the help came from outside of the manufacturer.

The more expensive ones like the 990 series is a lot better.
For a start these are not new. they have been used in China for the domestic market for 8 plus years so by now the rough edges should be missing ?

If you pay more and buy from Adtech or GSK then you can expect good support but that's why you pay more.

For most psrt it's not support but understanding the controller.
In my case on a couple of things I wasn't sure off, and the book was wrong but the edited copy is on the internet already, I went down to a CNC place local to me and got one of their guys to explain what was what.

He runs 3 machines, a Fanuc 21, a Haas and a DMG but even though they have three proprietary controllers they all work the same.

TBH I can see the support issues with these stand alones being far less than having to link a PC to a controller to an external controller and probably throw a conversion board into the mix.

The lathes at the CNC workshop has a PC of unknown vintage, Mach 4, Pokeys 57CNC controller and a box from arturo Duncan to connect it all up so when it doesn't work who do you go to ?
Dell / HP ?, Mach 4?, Pokeys?, or Arturo ?

All of whom just want to pass the buck.

Most people want to use a machine, not play with it and they want plug and play. As soon as two components get thrown into the ring it's not plug and play.

I bought a K-Flop a while ago as having been told it can do lathe which it can IF you are able to program in C++

So it stands on the shelf with the rest of the very expensive components that promise the earth but never deliver.

[Boyan Silyavski]

I thought its absolutely obvious - DDCSV is a cheap controller meant for 3+1 and is absolutely fabulous for a 3 axis machine due to the fact that it works at all for 150 euro. Especially good for a cheap machine. I thought also i am conversing with grown men that need not explaining that if i have spend 7000-8000 euro on my machine on parts only, i can afford to buy 1000euro controller that can home correctly.

The reason playing with Pokeys and all these controllers was to test for myself the cheaper options, so i choose a controller for future cheap machines.

But while you are laughing many people will retrofit it on 3 or 4 axis mills and this will seriously undermine the market for EU made and USA made stuff for DIY. Will see who laughs after 2 years.

Plus now that i have found the good expensive controllers for 500 euro from manufacturer, per piece, not wholesale price, it will be interesting to see how CSMIO will sell after an year or 2 their controllers for 900 euro, even if the offer all the support in the world.

When i go at ebay i hit "lowest price+lowest shipping first" , don't you . The other day was checking 3d printers. On every Prusa sold there are 500 sold from China, from each of the 20 manufacturers. Just a fact. I am not saying anything.

[m_c]

But while you are laughing many people will retrofit it on 3 or 4 axis mills and this will seriously undermine the market for EU made and USA made stuff for DIY. Will see who laughs after 2 years.

Plus now that i have found the good expensive controllers for 500 euro from manufacturer, per piece, not wholesale price, it will be interesting to see how CSMIO will sell after an year or 2 their controllers for 900 euro, even if the offer all the support in the world.

Things could be very different in two years.
Every chance the Euro could very well implode by then, along with China's artificially deflated economy.
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I've got a friend who works in materials import and export, and he reckons it's just a case of when, not if, the Chinese economy causes major problems. Brexit has caused him enough headaches already, but I think he fully expects to be out of work for a long time once China loses grip on inflation, and global demand plummets.

[JAZZCNC]

Things could be very different in two years.
Every chance the Euro could very well implode by then, along with China's artificially deflated economy.

Things could be very different in two weeks time if that lunatic Trump wins in few hours time.!!!

[Boyan Silyavski]

Things could be very different in two weeks time if that lunatic Trump wins in few hours time.!!!

Hopefullynot,comeonLee,fixthatquickreplyplease

[magicniner]

Things could be very different in two weeks time if that lunatic Trump wins in few hours time.!!!

You forgot to cross your fingers while you typed that! :-(

[Ger21]

Hopefully, everything Trump said he wanted to do were lies, like everything else he said.

[Neale]

Please don't get too distracted by the nonsense that's just happened in the US, guys! I, for one, have been following this discussion with great interest, although I doubt that I shall be throwing out my Mach3/CSMIO setup any time soon. However, I recognise that that solution isn't the optimum as I have a slaved X axis machine and I still need to sort out homing problems with the IP/M because the IP/S, which does it properly, is too expensive. Maybe in future the answer will be one of these dedicated controllers.

There are definitely two classes of users here. One is the home/hobby user, like me. I'm fortunate in having a background in both electronics and computing, so wiring up and configuring these things, assuming that they have the basic functionality needed, isn't a big deal, and I can afford time more than money to get it all sorted. For me, the other type of user is the professional but small-scale user. Not the big organisations with the manpower and resources to sort problems, but the one-man kind of business. A friend of mine who runs a small business making signs and notice boards wanted to bring the engraving in house instead of subcontracting it to a local company (who weren't very good anyway). He bought a Chinese 600x900 router, although a rather better and more expensive version than some of the cheap ones around. He needs to be doing money-earning work, not fiddling about building a machine. Setting up the hardware was pretty easy, no problems there. However, the machine came with Mach3 (and he did buy a "proper" licence) plus a USB motion controller. Fortunately, I was able to help him get going. The half-day or so it took me would probably have taken him a week, assuming that he succeeded at all. He could have done with an install-and-forget solution, even at a slightly higher price. For the home user, once the dedicated box becomes cheaper than buying all the separate bits and wiring them together, the choice will be equally obvious. I, for one, am looking to you experts to guide me as to what's becoming available

Interesting that there seems to be such a problem with lathe CNC, particularly threading. At first sight it doesn't sound like that big a problem but maybe it is - and the lathe CNC market is too small compared with 3/4-axis machines to be worth worrying about?

[m_c]

<snip>
I bought a K-Flop a while ago as having been told it can do lathe which it can IF you are able to program in C++

So it stands on the shelf with the rest of the very expensive components that promise the earth but never deliver.

Some very valid points regarding support.
One of the things I like about Dynomotion, is Tom (main man behind the company) is very responsive to any questions. Any bugs discovered are dealt with quickly. Only last week a bug was found in their new screen editor, and the fix was released today, which was actually pretty slow for them, but he had already posted a work around within a few hours, so a full fix wasn't urgent.
It's not unknown for him to release patches within a day to fix proven bugs.
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Yes, they can be daunting to setup, but if you post up on the Yahoo group, or the cnczone forum, you'll get help. I've seen people with no programming background have their systems up and running within a couple days, which isn't bad by the time you factor in time for replies, and for the people to gather/post/test things.
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For basic systems, the hardest part is the main configuration file (configures the KFlop with what axis outputs/inputs are needed), but there are sample files included, and for the axis configuration information, the KMotion configuration program can generate the required code for you to copy and paste in.
It's only when you want to start doing custom things that the C coding really kicks in, but there are plenty sample files included.
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For a basic lathe, running Mach3, all you need is the main config file, with just the axis information for the two axis. Everything else can be handled in Mach 3. For KMotionCNC, with the new screen editor, simple things like flipping outputs with a button, can now be handled without having to write any C code.
However KFlops also suffer with the Mach3 slow pull out problem when threading. The problem is although Mach3 switches back from mm/rev to mm/min mode, it uses the mm/rev value as the mm/min value, so for a 2mm pitch thread, you get 2mm/min pull out, instead of the set federate.
KMotionCNC on the other hand doesn't. Provided you write the G-code correctly, it'll group together all the required synchronised moves, so you can pull out however you want.
Somebody posted an example not that long ago which involved a taper lead in to a parallel thread to a 45deg pullout.
The only requirement is you need a quadrature output encoder on the spindle. Single/multi-slot sensors won't work.
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However, if you want to clear some shelf space, I'd buy the KFlop, as it can be handy having an extra one for testing.