Centroid Acorn CNC Controller

[Bravin Neff]

Whatever you want. Inputs can be used with sensors, switches, pushbuttons, signals from servo drives, encoders, probes, MPG's,....
Outputs can activate relays, contactors, solenoids, LED's, .....

You can create your own M-Codes in UCCNC, which are written in C#. It doesn't have ladder, but you can write what they call macroloops, which are macros that run continuously in the background.

If you need full Fanuc macro B, I think your only option is Mach4 Industrial. But you can do more basic parametric programming in UCCNC and most others.
I have no use for parametric programming, doing everything I need in CAM.


You're not going to get a $10,000 control for $300. No hobby controls are perfect. UCCNC is relatively new to the market, and I expect it will be maturing for a few years still. But for me, it's headed in the direction that works best for me.

I could have swore I just read on the Centroid site that the CNC12 software with the acorn (and the higher DIY boards) have macro b. Their retrofit controls do. Funny you say you're not going to get a $10K control for $300. Today's $300 control easily outspec the way more expensive controls from the 90s, in most respects. I just read on the Centroid spec sheet that it does 2,000 block look ahead. In the late 1990s I used to work on Mori Seikis where a "data server with RISC processor" was a $10,000 *option* and that gave you... wait for it... 480 block look ahead! And we thought that was that cat's meow, LOL.

What's frustrating is seeing something like UCCNC - which I'm very attracted to - has all these features, clearly way ahead in many respects of what we had in the 1990s, yet it doesn't do cutter comp, which we had in the 80's'. I haven't paid attention to the DIY CNC world until fairly recently, but what I have been studying suggests it really took off with mach2/3 about 10-15 years ago. Its very impressive in many ways, but with these frequent and frustrating blind spots.