Hello,

WoodKnot: No need to apologise. Yep it's all birch ply. This process has felt like I need a cnc to build a cnc. Aluminium would have been fab but I am one man in his shed!

Minor success this weekend - I've printed the 100+ pages of the mach3 manual and started to read it. After having enough of reading I decided to revisit the calibration again. My thought process was as you described regarding steps and pitch. For some reason this time it is happy in metric and moves as requested. Perhaps I was not saving the settings before exiting or even the classic reboot of the software????

What are peoples thoughts on Mach3 or Mach4. I have a UC100 interface and it seems as if the difference at cost is $25.

Jazzcnc: With regards to the speeds, Yep your right, I did think bigger is better because of the length of the bed at 1800mm and was concerned about torque etc.
Nema 34, 8.7mn stepper driven by a cw8060 (6.0A 80v) Being supplied by a 480W 48V 10A PSU. 200 steps stepper motor and dip switches set at 1/10th.

It jogs along nicely but I was concerned about not over stressing the the whole system. I didn't want to drive it apart being over zealous.

My next task it to produce a spoil board.

Andy W.