Hello Jopo,

I've got a VMC190 as well. I don't have the software for mine but I've heard it's somewhat limited. You can only get the software if you are an educational establishment, Boxford are not allowed to sell it to non-educational people.

It's usually recommended to ditch some or all the electronics and replace either with MACH3 or the Conqueror Designs system which is what I'm doing. You can, allegedly, if you want and have enough knowledge (courage) wire the MACH system into the existing stepper drives and motor drive. It's a lot cheaper to do things this way as you don't have to buy stepper drives. It's not actually difficult but you do need to be careful that everything is wired correctly. MACH has plenty of backup from people who use it as well as the software supplier. I went for the Conqueror system as I want to use rigid tapping which I don't think MACH will do on this machine as the spindle speed is not stable enough for the single pulse per rev which MACH uses. The Conqueror system uses multiple pulses per rev to keep thing in synch. As I don't yet have mine running I can't comment on it 'in use' (I need about 12 days a week!!) but as you can see everything is a trade-off. If you don't have much cash to throw at the job then MACH with the breakout board wired to the existing stepper drives is the way to go.

David