CNCdrive UC300ETH Mach3 plugin is now available

[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.