Thank you Chad for the warm welcome! Hi everyone, I'm Bill. I am new to the forum. I am thankful for forum's like this. It is awesome to see so many people that are like minded and enjoying what they are doing. I got bit by the CNC bug fairly recently. My hobby has been electronics since about age 10. I was the kid who hung around the local radio shack and tv repair shop. I would drag home every radio and tv I could carry off of the curb on collection night, to find out how it worked. I learned a lot of things the hard way but sometimes that's just what it takes. (It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll!) I eventually realized I could get paid to do what I love and began work for a tv repair shop in 92. It was the best decision of my life! I've been in the industry since and am fortunate to be able to say, I don't mind my job. I am currently an electronics engineering technician working for an LED lighting company. I am also attending university for my EE degree. I build LED lighting prototype light fixtures and the associated electronics that power them. I get to build test fixtures to take measurements for new designs. I often get to design parts in Solidworks which is quite interesting in itself. Cad is not hard to learn and is awesome! It is fun to see your ideas quickly turn into parts for your designs! I'll admit that doing what I enjoy for a living has, at times, taken some of the fun out of it. When you have to do it, it isn't exactly the same. So you look for projects that fuel your interest... things you enjoy doing. I often work closely with the good people in the machine shop at work. Machinist's work has always been interesting to me and CNC puts a lot of that into a language I can understand. I have done some metal work in the past but nothing CNC. My electronics background helps a lot with understanding CNC and makes it all the more interesting to me. I need to make my own PCB's and some small metal and plastic parts for my latest electronics project. I am building a time-lapse camera (raspberry pi) that transfers photos via Wi-Fi to my home computer network. It is night-vision capable and is solar powered so, no wires at all! I plan to use it in my garden and take time-lapse photographs of another hobby of mine, HOT peppers! I need a lot of custom parts made and I hate to ask the guys in the CNC shop for too many favors doing "government work". So I recently bought a chinese 3040 machine. Now I have another hobby to make my other hobbies more fun! (does anyone else have this same problem?) I was planning upgrades and mod's before the machine even arrived. After "monkeying" around with it for a couple of days I have everything working but I haven't actually milled anything yet. I think I am far enough along to start making some test cut's soon but I already see a ton of reading I would like to do here on the forum as I go along. I am having a blast learning about industrial machinery and CNC machining. I ran across this site in all my searches and am happy I did. I was considering GRBL for a while until I checked out Mach 3, awesome! Exactly what I was looking for! Thank you for all of the great information here, it is very much appreciated. It is my sincere hope that everyone here is enjoying what they are doing as much as I am!