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« on: January 17, 2018, 09:42:05 PM »
I think the first thing to do is define Hobby. I will define them as
Group 1: Enjoys building the machines.
Group 2: Only interest in building a machine is that their other hobby (or business) requires a CNC and they assume that building a machine is cheaper than buying one.
Group 1 will choose Mach4 over Mach3 hands down I think. They will research, read manuals, etc.
Group 2 will be upset if they have to take the time to learn anything. After all, this is taking time form their true hobby.
Folks are passionate about their hobbies. Its only the stuff they consider work they want to skip through........ so they can get back to their hobby. How many times have you seen folks ask questions that are covered in the manuals, posted in the forum, covered in videos, etc.? I'm not talking about different questions either. I'm talking about the same question answered in all of those places and then some. If group 2 were considered hobbyist then HotRod, Fast Ford, Golf Digest and a plethora of other magazines would have gone out of business years ago. After all they earn a living selling publications related to hobbies. Mach provides some pretty decent manuals for free but many can't be bothered reading a manual, watching a video or reading a post pertaining to their hobby. Nope, it just doesn't add up. On what planet is it ok to ask others to put more effort into their hobby than than they themselves will.
I'm firmly in group 1. I love making machines run good, faster, more efficient, more intuitive, nicer interfaces, etc. That's what drives me. I have zero interest in running them after that though. And I remember very well what brought me to Mach. I was doing CNC maintenance for years. I asked reps. of various controller manufacturers every so often how much the controls would cost to build or retrofit a machine for myself. Back then the answer was a pretty consistent $10,000 an axis. Well, that was well beyond my reach. Then a friend told me about Mach3 and I have been hooked since. It didn't cost me $30,000 but I have been learning for almost 15 years. And if I used any thing other than what I know already, that would be another learning curve. And Mach3 to Mach4 is the same. Its different than 3 but leaps and bounds better IMO.
If your in group 2 I will say that you can Do It Yourself and potentially save a lot of money. This is exactly what Hobby is for. But it will cost in time (and that is true for Mach3, Mach4, or any other). You must realize that Mach is software. It is not smart enough to change the way it works to suite you. You will have to be smart enough to change the way you work to suit it (again, true for any controller until we have AI). However, if you find yourself in a position that you just cant change the way your doing something more often than not Mach can be taught (through customization) to do it your way. Mach4s capacity to meet these situations are vastly improved over Mach3s. But customization requires more effort, time and/or money depending on how you go about it. You have to weigh it all out. I encourage people to build their own system myself but it isn't for everyone.
The best I can tell, most newcomers like Mach4 much better than Mach3.
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