Quote Originally Posted by Boyan Silyavski View Post


And the time spend with boards were because of their crappy manuals also i must say. Pokeys for example. take a look at their Mach3 forum section. How many times the same bloody question Spindle and Probe. Not a word in the manual. I had to ask them also. Its like swimming against the current with some people.
This is the bit I feel for.
On another forum it was pointed out to me that PlanetCNC andd UCCNC can now do threading and rigid tapping so last night I wasted another hour to take a look, here is a copy of the post.

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It seems that PlanetCNC and UCCNC now support fully synchronised threading as well as rigid tapping.

Martin.

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Thank you for those links Martin, I wasn't aware that either could do threading on lathe.

However having spent nearly an hour perusing both websites and down loading both hardware and software manuals for both I'm non plussed at what they can do. This is starting to get familiar ??

Planet CNC first.

The board says it can take spindle encoder in but in the 35 page manual of which 7 pages are spent telling you how to wire all the different types of limits switch [ which aren't actually needed for the machine to run] but no explanation of how to wire the encoder in and not even is it just index pulse or multi line. I suspect it's index pulse only which is not a lot of good for accurate work

UCCNC next

Again hardly any information other than a video of threading with a felt tipped pan. The hardware manual is 21 pages long 19 of which tell you how to connect it up to the ethernet port, [ is it THAT hard ? and if it is WHY ? ]

Then the last two pages tell you what the terminals are in flowing terms like output 1, 2,3 etc for Port 1, poert 2 is identical but no a clue where to connect to ?

So please excuse me if I don't throw 215 Euros for the UCCNC board and software plus breakout board and another 263 Euro for the Planet offering.

I don't think the shelf can stand any more white elephants.

Seriously lads it's this total lack of support that is killing this. They know if or how good it works but it's a closely guarded secret.

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The reference to the shelf and white elepants is the fact that the shelf above the bench where I do all the CNC work is literally full of controllers, breakout boards etc etc that either don't work, are no longer supported etc, etc to the tune of somewhere between £1500 and £2000 and I for one have now decided after the Mach 4 fiasco above that enough is enough.