Hi,
Confusing part is the program they seem to use looks identical to Mach3.
Hi, you are correct, they do picture a program page that looks remarkably like Mach3. It was a common technique
for Chinese manufacturers to take Mach3 and modify it for their machine and then sell it with their machine, a straight
out pirate derivative. Most of those manufacturers are gone. The screen shot in the manual you linked to is an example
of such a pirate derivative of Mach3.
If you can find a copy of it you may well get it to work but you will not be welcome on this forum....we don't support
pirated copies of Mach, either plain Mach3 or some derivative of it.
If you wish to get this machine going well do as TPS has suggested.
The first decision is Mach3 or Mach4. All development on Mach3 ceased six years ago, any bugs it has will stay that way.
It still has a huge fan base and is somewhat cheaper ($175 verses $200). Mach4 is the supported version, a much improved
and flexible solution that does all Mach3 did and more.
The second decision is external motion controller or parallel port. Both Mach3 and Mach4 have a parallel port option,
the Mach3 parallel port is free whereas the Mach4 parallel port called Darwin has a $25 license fee. Both parallel ports
require that you use Windows 7 or earlier and 32 bit OS. The parallel port despite its popularity (being cheap/free) is
not as stable and robust as a good external controller.
Well known, good quality controllers that have full manufacturers support include the Ethernet SmoothStepper (Warp9),
the UC300 (CNCDrive) or the 57CNC (PoKeys). These three all have both Mach3 AND Mach4 plugins. All three have fully developed
Mach3 plugins whereas The Ethernet SmoothStepper enjoys an edge in capability over the other two in Mach4. They range
in price from about $140 to $190.
There are other controllers like the CSMIO (CSLabs) at 600 Euro and the Hicon Integra (Vital Systems) at $600 for the base
model (more for various extra activated features); as you see they are very much more expensive.
There are a number of cheap to very cheap Chinese made controllers, seldom do they work well and none I know of support
all of Mach3s features and worse still you get zero support from the manufacturer. There is one Chinese manufacturer offering
what they claim is a Mach4 capable controller, XHC, it so buggy....avoid like the plague.
Craig