Hi,
industrial PCs like Avantech are good but pricey, very pricey.
I bought a dual core Atom mini-ITX board and ran Mach3 with a couple of parallel ports for two years without problem.
Then I upgraded to Mach4 and an Ethernet SmoothStepper with the same underpowered Atom PC, and it runs like a trooper.
The truth is that Mach, either 3 or 4, is not a power hungry application. What really upsets Mach is when the PC skives off to do
some other task and the motion controller runs out of data and stalls. Mach's parallel port, which lives in the kernel and runs
in the same PC as the Mach application is particularly susceptible to stuttering/stalling/stopping as a result of other software
and/or services on the PC. For this reason an external motion controller, being
VERY much less susceptible, is highly
desired.
May I suggest don't waste your money on a flash PC, it wont make your machine any faster, more powerful, more accurate
or anything else. Use your money to get the things that do make a difference starting with a decent (no Chinese rubbish)
motion controller. As I have stated I now use Mach4 and comments hereafter refer to the status of controllers that have a Mach4
plugin.....Hicon Integra, ESS, PMDX-424,UC300,57CNC.
My favorite is the Ethernet SmoothStepper by Warp9. Warp9 have released over the last few months Backlash Comp,
Lathe Threading, Spindle PID, Laser Rastering/Vectoring and Torch Height Control in addition to all the other standard realtime
supports its always had. These new features make it the stand-out performer in Mach4 in its price range.
There are others like the UC300 and 57CNC which are economically priced, good quality and plenty of features......just not all
that the ESS has.
There is a wider choice of controllers for Mach3, including all those I have already mentioned that have Mach4 plugins, and
includes a wide range of Chinese controllers, some of which seem to work...mostly. Do your homework on the forum,
.....ask.....ask....ask......BEFORE you buy. Its too late once you've already paid for something to find that its not as good as
you thought.
If you want a groovy little PC to run Mach try this:
https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1585.htmlCraig