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?