[ger21]

The plug and play system uses an Ethernet Smooth Stepper controller, which only works with Mach3 or Mach4. They should be close to moving to Mach4, from what I've heard.

The difference between plug and play and building your own is probably $500 and 100 hours of work.

I've never seen one, but the pictures I've seen of the GMT spindles makes them appear to be much higher quality that the typical $350 chinese spindles.
And even at $1000, they're still close to half the price of a "name brand" spindle.

 

[ger21]

The UCCNC compatible motion controllers seem to be well regarded, but none of them can match the 4MHz pulse capability of the ESS

Almost all stepper drivers have a maximum input frequency of 200Khz-250Khz. The DMM servos I'm using have a max of 500Khz.
So in reality, you'd need very expensive high end servos for this to be an issue. And even then, electronic gearing in the servo drives can be used.

UCCNC controllers with UCCNC have a major advantage over the ESS/Mach4. When features get added, or bugs get fixed in UCCNC, the controllers firmware is updated along with the software. 100% of the software features are supported by the hardware 100% of the time.

Warp9 has been working on their Mach4 plugin for probably close to 4-5 years now, and it still doesn't support 100% of Mach4 features.

Yes, Mach4 is supposedly much better than Mach3. I actually have licenses for both Mach4 hobby and Mach4 Industrial.

But Artsoft alienated a LOT of longtime Mach3 users with some of the choices they made with Mach4, and they won't get them back.

But in actuality, Mach4 is much easier to customize yourself

In some ways yes, in other ways I'd disagree. Unless you are good at programming in Lua.

I believe your a fan of UCCNC. Many advantages over Mach3?
That’s my main concern

For me, yes, there are many advantages.

Having said that, there are probably 100x-200x more Mach3 users than UCCNC.
I still use Mach3 on my old machine.

I'd probably buy the plug and play package, and get up and running. You could replace the ESS and custom breakout boards with an AXBB and UCCNC for about $200 down the road, and you could sell the ESS for at at least $100 if you run into issues with Mach3.

 

[ger21]

If you look inside there cabinet ,I could be wrong ,but it looks a little tight in there to change things out ? I believe they’ve got some components stacked , so I don’t know if the area would be that great for upgrading components.

The orange board is a custom board to eliminate the step/dir signals to the drives. You can scrap that.
The red board on the bottom is a custom breakout board, with the ESS mounted to it. You can scrap those as well.
I'd also scrap the two power supplies and replace them with a single toroidal supply. That would free up half the space on the right side.

A single AXBB is about 3"x5", and 1" thick, and would leave you a lot more room.

Shame cncrouterparts doesn't offer both options .

They have to support what they sell, and having one option saves them a lot of time and money.
They should be transitioning to Mach4 soon, which should be much better than Mach3. I'm sure that's what they'll have when you're ready to buy. :wink:

 

[ger21]

Call and ask them. I would think that they've been working with Mach4 for many months now as they prepare to transition from Mach3.

 

[ger21]

If you have any thought toward cabinetmaking, even if only for your shop, you will want the capability to cut dovetails. That will mean being able to cut off the front of your machine. I'm not sure how far the cutter in a spindle overhangs the frame on a CNCRP/Avid pro machine, but you will need a few inches clearance. If the pro machine doesn't provide that "out of the box," you will need to set the front crossmember back sufficient to give you room to cut dovetails. There are alternatives, but they usually involve making removeable sections of spoilboard. The loss of a few inches of table length made the most sense to me.

My preference wold be to add some length to the side extrusions. The downside is that you need longer gear racks and linear bearings as well. But you don't give up any length.

Or, you can just assemble it with the end crossmember set back, can't you?