CNCdrive UC300ETH Mach3 plugin is now available

[A_Camera]

It's not about the cost it's the fact it uses 5V and all the instabilty that comes with it.! Anyone who's had noise issues will know all too well why 5V I/O is best avoided for stable system.

Fine but it is normal to use 5V for logic internally. All digital chips run on 5V and/or 3.3V. Nobody is saying that that's what it must use on the inputs and you must directly connect switches and everything, connect a BOB with 24V inputs and than you are just fine.

[JAZZCNC]

connect a BOB with 24V inputs and than you are just fine.

If only it was that easy. Don't know how experienced you are with BOB's/Cnc but let me tell you Bob's are pain in the back side and the biggest cause of troubles on CNC machines. That £5 BOB will cost more like £100 with all the trouble that will come it over time.

If the machine is being used to make money and lets be honest most router type machines even at DIY level are made with the intention of making little money with. Then why anyone would want to take this route is beyond me.!! . . . It's like playing russian roulet with 5 bullets in six gun.!!

[A_Camera]

If only it was that easy. Don't know how experienced you are with BOB's/Cnc but let me tell you Bob's are pain in the back side and the biggest cause of troubles on CNC machines. That £5 BOB will cost more like £100 with all the trouble that will come it over time.

If the machine is being used to make money and lets be honest most router type machines even at DIY level are made with the intention of making little money with. Then why anyone would want to take this route is beyond me.!! . . . It's like playing russian roulet with 5 bullets in six gun.!!

I have already made more than enough money with my CNC using the cheap BOB and the UC300USB. Never once I had any issue with that BOB, that's why I bought another. It's the worlds simplest thing, so it beats me what can go wrong with them. I am an electronics engineer and have checked out everything possible, and I don't think they will cause any issues. You make it sound like rocket science. They are just a few opto couplers, buffers and a relay. I may not have a lot of experience in machining but have about 40 years in electronics, so I am really not worried about such simple things.

Of course, if my daily bread was depending on my CNC I would not use the cheap BOBs, but for a hobby they are just right.

[JAZZCNC]

I may not have a lot of experience in machining but have about 40 years in electronics, so I am really not worried about such simple things.

Well I do and I'm telling you in my expereince they are cause of most troubles on CNC machine.(After broken/lose wires)

It's like the USB argument I've had so many times with people like you.! . . . People who have insisted there's nothing wrong with USB for CNC it works fine, they never have any troubles with it.!! . . . . Total Bollocks. Compared to Ethernet it sucks.
Anyone who works and maintains CNC equipment will tell you it's pain in the arse and can't be trusted not to lockup. Well the Same goes with Cheap Bob's they can't be trusted and will fail or cause issues at some point, often sooner rather than later.

If they are working for you then great but that doesn't change the fact they are potential trouble causers best avoided.

[John S]

I'll back Jazz on this and throw a bit of history into the ring.

I started off converting standard bench top Mills into CNC and bought what we could get hold of.
At that time Arturo Duncan over at CNC4PC was doing opto isolated cards but when fitted to the drivers of the day, also opto isolated they crawled, big time and we got him to bring a non isolated card out on just the motor outputs so you only had one opto, the one in the drive.

This was called the C11G board, G standing for Gecko. we bought many but they were not reliable and what sealed it was we had to pay about
£16 to £19 in import duty, handling and VAT for each card. Not a problem until cards went back for repair and we got hit for anout £16 - £19 because he was too idle to mark it returned unit - FOC.

We paid for one card 3 times and I kid you not, that was the end of it and we also got Sieg over in China to swap to a Chinese sourced card that in 500 ? unit only ever failed once when a heat sink fell off the 7805 chip and shorted something out.

At the same time looking for something cheaper we tried the System 3 cards from DIYCNC. Even though we had Roy down at our place to show him cards not working correctly we still covered a few thousand miles sorting his problems out at our expense. We even took cards and computers back to his place to show they wouldn't work together.

At this time Sieg got into the turnkey CNC market and we flew to China to do a deal with them. WE built the first KX1 in my workshop and it was sent to China with all the drawings. It did actually get returned at one point which I never expected and it's still up in my hayloft. Very similar to what they turned out in production but for some reason it's opposite handed as regards motors on the X and the cabinet, not that it matters.
We didn't make a KX3, they scaled the KX1 up.

I do know how many have been produced as we do world wide web support on them, correction, world wide except Asia and Russia.
However I can't disclose that figure but it is in the tens of thousands.

It's always the little problems as Jazz says that trip you up, silly things that with a bit of fore sight would not happen.

As well as building machines I also deliver some and train users. Up to a few years ago we also used to attend shows with a KX1 and a KX3 in cabinets so they could run under power cutting steel, always steel at shows.

It's because of probably this unique situation in the UK that I know a lot of what people want and expect from a machine or attendant software.

Jazz is unique in that he works on routers, I work on lathes and mills, believe it or not, totally different animals. A mill can work fine on a USB card as the speeds are very much slower than the kernel speed the computer is able to reach. On a mill or lathe the controller is always waiting for the machine unlike a router which can easily outrun the controller, especially if servo's are used.

I watched the video and frankly I wasn't impressed. You quote 10,000mm /min speed but on a machine such as yours you don't have the room and I'll bet it never gets over 2500mm / min
I'm certain that a standard mill running a standard copy of M3 could do this file the same.
Perhaps UCCNC is capable of more but it will take it to be installed on a larger machine than that. I feel the file doesn't do justice to the software

[A_Camera]

I watched the video and frankly I wasn't impressed. You quote 10,000mm /min speed but on a machine such as yours you don't have the room and I'll bet it never gets over 2500mm / min
I'm certain that a standard mill running a standard copy of M3 could do this file the same.
Perhaps UCCNC is capable of more but it will take it to be installed on a larger machine than that. I feel the file doesn't do justice to the software

I didn't post that video to impress you or anyone. Never the less, I don't think there are many DIY machines which run at that speed with only direct stepper motor driven single 1605 ball screws on each axis. Most people when they want speed in this range use belt and gearbox, dual screws, higher pitch, servo drive and so on. I seriously doubt that there are many Chinese moving gantry machines which reach more than half of this speed. Never the less, this is not a pissing contest, so I don't care if you are impressed or not.

As for the maximum REAL speed of my machine, again I think you are wrong, but I still have to measure that using real instruments, which I don't think I will ever do because as I said, it is not a contest and is not my goal to impress anyone.

Anyway, just for the sake of discussion and for answering your claim, UCCNC and Mach3 both display the speeds, in this video at least once, at the 40 second mark you can see it reaches 10,000mm/min. If my calculations are right then with 700mm/s/s acceleration I am up at 10,000mm/min after 19.8mm. Watching that video frame by frame shows 33mm for the Y to move from 170mm down towards Y0 before it reaches 10,000 (you can see it in the FACT message box) and deceleration starts at the Y 19.18 mark, which is almost like my calculation.


Remember that the frame rate of the video is not high enough for accurate measurements, but I am pretty sure it is correct as far as the top speed is indeed reached at some point, probably long before the 33mm travel of Y. Also, the settings used was constant speed, which probably affects the distance needed as well, but never the less, I am sure that I actually reach 10,000mm/min. Also remember that this drawing is only 170mm Y movement, and my table is almost twice that size if I need it to be.

The 2500mm/min is the feed rate for the pen when the pen is down, not the rapids, which is obvious from the video as well.

I am aware that my machine is tiny by your standards but again, it does not matter. It is large enough for me, weights over 80kg and it takes up more than enough space as well. Lastly, it definitely beats most, if not all the kits which can be bought with similar table size, in terms of speed and real accuracy, but regardless, it is NOT a competition against anyone else.

[JAZZCNC]

I'll back Jazz on this and throw a bit of history into the ring.

Jazz is unique in that he works on routers, I work on lathes and mills, believe it or not, totally different animals. A mill can work fine on a USB card as the speeds are very much slower than the kernel speed the computer is able to reach. On a mill or lathe the controller is always waiting for the machine unlike a router which can easily outrun the controller, especially if servo's are used.

Thanks John I was hoping you would jump in because know you have had same BOB issues, As do many Cnc Engineers.

You also hit the nail on the Head with routers being different animals. Routers are always pushing the edge on Torque and Pulse rates because of the speeds they work at. In my experience the only way to avoid issues is by building using quality components and with performance to spare so they are running well below there maximum.

Even then It's fine line between working correctly and not. Even with experience this can catch you out as I found today. (by the way this as nothing to do with Bob's or Electrics just high lighting the differences in machines.)

Deliverd machine to Kent few week ago, 500mile round trip for me. On Friday Customer informed me was having issues with loss of position.

This is twin screw machine connected with belts so after talking with customer I suspected we had slipping pulley or some mechaincal issue, which to me is totally unacceptable and very hard to swallow or believe.!

So in the car this morning at 5am on the way to Kent to find issue. Thankfully and to relief of my pride all mechanical was fine and was just case of motors being overtuned. Bummer for me because was long trip just for bit of motor tuning, but still needed to happen for customers happiness and my own piece of mind.

But this highlights that the line between working fine and not on router with steppers is so very close. If this was Mill/lathe then wouldn't have happened (without being ridiculously overtuned which it wasn't) because motors are running no where near there maximum.

[Ger21]

Once one of these three does that they will be the new mach3 as controller of choice as regards easy setting up foe beginners and semi- skilled.

I think that UCCNC has a big advantage here.

1) UCCNC was designed to "feel" very much like Mach3. They both have very similar controls, and the setup is very similar.
While the macro language is different (C#), it's very similar to Mach3. The terminology is very similar, with buttons, LED's, and DRO's.
UCCNC also has an integrated screen designer that's far superior to Mach3's, (Screen4) if you like to customize the interface.

2) Mach3's success had a lot to do with the users, pushing Art to add features and make it better and better.
While Terry and I don't often agree on things, we are both trying to get all of Mach3's capabilities into UCCNC, without any of the bugs. There have been new releases every few weeks, with both new features and minor bug fixes.

I don't have any experience with PlanetCNC, but I've heard that it works well.
I seriously considered Eding CNC, but it just seemed a little too "non standard" for me. Bert seemed to be very helpful and accommodating, though.

On the subject of hardware.
The UC300ETH is really no different than a Smoothstepper, which is hands down the most popular Mach3 motion controller. Both need similar breakout boards, and with the M44 motherboard, some breakout boards designed for the SS can be used with the UC300ETH.
The difference, though, is that I've seen years of poor plugin development from Warp9, while CNC Drive provides fully functional firmware right out of the gate. With bug fixes in days, rather than years.

I forgot, there is a 24V motherboard for the UC300 from Hungary:

https://www.cncpart.hu/uc300-5441

I need to ask some questions about it to CNC Drive.

[John S]

I forgot, there is a 24V motherboard for the UC300 from Hungary:

https://www.cncpart.hu/uc300-5441

I need to ask some questions about it to CNC Drive.

Looks interesting but at £350 for the breakout board plus the UCCNC it's over the cost of the high end Chinese stand alone controllers.

Then you are again involving two companies.

[Ger21]

Looks interesting but at £350 for the breakout board plus the UCCNC it's over the cost of the high end Chinese stand alone controllers.
Then you are again involving two companies.

It puts you in the price range of the CS Labs stuff.

I don't see the two companies as being an issue. They are just providing a board, so there aren't software issues like you see with Mach3/Mach4, where the motion controller developers have to write their own plugins.
CNC Drive will always develop their own motion controllers and write all of the software/firmware, so you don't have compatibility issues.