Migrating from Mach 3

[Chaz]

I wonder if I could tap the collective wisdom here on how I should migrate from Mach 3 please? I've been using M3 for about 8 years now generally successfully, using an old Dell Optiplex computer running XP and driving through the parallel port. I have 3 worries: the machine is old and might crash any time and XP computers with PP are rare and also old; I've written quite a few macros and a new turning offset screen but that isn't finished yet, so there will be some legacy pain; Mach 3 documentation is DIRE and the software seems to be a patch kluge. As I'm about to upgrade my old Win 7 laptop to a new Win10 one I have an option to dedicated the old machine to CNC. So I'm thinking about both software and hardware options and very interested in others' experiences.

My options seem to be
1 Switch to a motion controller – this seems to be a given – preferably one that has a parallel port output so it can just plug in to my BoBs on lathe and mill. UC100 looks interesting.

and…

2 Mach 3 - but pretty unsupported now and poorly documented and will motion controller plugin support continue? Might be a way in though.

3 Mach 4 – but why did they choose Lua as a scripting language rather than for example Python? Is the user base big enough for it to survive?

4 UCCNC

5 PlanetCNC

6 Linux CNC – not sure if this supports motion controllers and anyway has a reputation for difficulty in setting up

7 A dedicated controller – but that may not give me the flexibility I need for example to run my offset setting scripts.


Any war stories or advice from others who have travelled this route would be most welcome!

T.I.A.

John.

Acorn Centroid?

[Palletlad]

you can get refurbished PC's that have XP on them with very good specs for £30 off of ebay, the sellers where really good as well as they replace any that have a fault within 60 days (they service every pc before selling) even so with your currant pc you say "it is near its end of its life" in what respect it could be a simple fix such as cleaning out all the dust inside the case to allow the fans to work better.

[JohnHaine]

Thanks for the replies and advice chaps. Seems to me that since I want turning, UCCNC is out. For Acorn you have to buy the controller and the software. Planet CNC looks quite attractive as it does turning as well as milling. My offset macros automatically calibrate turning tools and populate the tool table, so can't do that in CAM. LinuxCNC has a limited choice of motion controllers. I want to get better pulsing performance anyway so a motion controller looks a good option. I really don't want to keep buying replacement XP PCs especially if it perpetuates the Mach3 limitations. Anyway I'm tired of puzzling out the c**p documentation. So a bit further forward, useful information, thanks!

[A_Camera]

I agree, you shouldn't carry on with XP, both W7 and W10 are better but if you want to carry on using Mach3 with parallel ports then you are limited to W7 32 bits, but if you want a better PC and a motion controller then you can also use W10 64 bits. All of the UC motion controllers can be used with Mach3, you don't need UCCNC if it is not working for you.

[m_c]

Turn does limit choice, as it's a relatively small slice of the CNC market, compared to mills/routers/plasma cutters etc which all operate in a very similar way.

I'm pretty sure the UC motion controllers (or it might be Pokeys - I can remember a discussion over on the Yahoo Mach group a while back about multislot threading...), and the PMDX controllers support turn, but you'd have to use some flavour of Mach.
CS-Labs supports turn, but you have to use their fully featured controllers, along with an MPG module for threading IIRC, and again you're limited to Mach at the present time.
Smoothsteppers also support turn, but again are Mach only.
Dynomotion KFlop would give you the option of Mach3 or KMotionCNC (it's free), which is what I personally use, but it would be reliant on you adding an encoder for threading. I originally ran with a KFlop and Mach3, as KMotionCNC at the time didn't have much support for turn, but after yet another Mach3 glitch, I moved to KMotionCNC a few years ago, and it's been flawless (more than which can be said about the operator..).

Then you're into standalone controllers.

It really depends on how much you're willing to spend, and how much re-wiring you're willing to do.