Hi,
I'm in England by the way
You poor, poor sick little puppy! My heart bleeds....LOL
I live in New Zealand so when it comes time to get hard to find parts from around the world...trust me I know.
CNC4PC is CNCDrive's distributor and so you can be confident of getting the real thing. The UC100 has a short USB cable which plugs into your PC
and a DB25 parallel port plug as an output. You might think of it as a USB to Parallel converter, but its not, its way to clever to just be called a converter.
Inside it is an FPGA and it is way WAY clever, none the less it does perform like a converter.
For a simple machine such as you have in mind a UC100 would be adequate. A UC100 has 12 outputs and 5 inputs.
Inputs are very constricted. You need one input for an EStop and you'll certainly want one for a probe, so you now only have three
left for limits, homes and anything else you require. It can be done, after all that was what many of us did when we had only the parallel port.
A couple of years ago I bought an Ethernet SmoothStepper (ESS), and that has 51 inputs and outputs, enough to shake a stick at! For the extra few dollars/pounds/
Euros/sheckels I would go for a more capable device than a UC100. CNC4PC will be able to supply a UC300 for instance. If I'm not mistaken PoKeys is a UK company.
The ESS is US made.
With a UC300 or an ESS you would require a breakout board/boards. Gerry recommends CNCRoom products as good quality at around $150. There are much cheaper
breakout boards that perform perfectly adequately also. Note that the UC300 and the ESS are Ethernet connected and is preferred over USB.
There are two brands that are worth mentioning on the basis of industrial quality.
The Hicon Integra by Vital Systems (US) is a very capable controller both Mach3 AND Mach4 and superbly built. It can be activated for analogue servos, THC etc.
The entry price for the Hicon Intergra is $600 USD.
The CSMIO by CSLabs (Poland) also has an excellent reputation for build quality and is very capable with Mach3. Their Mach4 plugin is buggy...it does work
but for the money paid its not really up to snuff. The company used to have an excellent reputation for after sales support but there has been disturbing rumours
that that has changed and they are not nearly as responsive as they used to be. Excellent build quality for about 600 Euro.
I personally would not consider CSMIO partly because of price but mostly because of their lack of support/enthusiasm for Mach4. For you being in the UK
may well find them a better fit.
You may find the thought of laying out some serious dough for a controller and/or a breakout board a steep step to take. If you choose wisely you will
use that controller for many years, even as ALL the rest of the machine gets upgraded and replaced, the same controller will still be churning away.
The controller is the heart of the machine, be prepared to spend a bit of time researching the features offered by each and be prepared to pay for
quality. You'll pay double if you try to buy on the cheap.....a few hours reading on the forum will convince you that those who buy cheap seldom have
a smooth experience.
Craig