Hi,
Mach, does not matter whether Mach3 or Mach4 requires a motion controller.
In the earliest days of Mach, Art Fennerty wrote a parallel port driver that converted Mach's (that is Mach the application) trajectory into streams of accurately
timed pulse necessary to drive motors like your TB6560 driver board. This piece of software resides right at the very heart of your PC, if fact it sort of elbows Windows
out of the way while it does the business.
Many, many software experts and engineers said 'will not ever happen, Windows can't work that way'....well Art proved them wrong. There are very few people on the planet today whom
know exactly how Art achieved it, and all these years later I've not seen anyone who has matched it or even got anything to work like Mach3's pulse engine.
This was the start of the hobby CNC revolution, because hobbyists could use cheap software to run machine which had hitherto required very expensive dedicated controllers.
Not that this was a complete tour-de-force...there were and are still some hiccups. Mach's pulse engine (as distinct for Mach the app) can only run on Windows 7 or earlier, XP
being the favorite at the time and 32bit at that. It would not run or run poorly on laptops. Worse it seems that some PCs did well an yet another even a better seeming PC would not
work. Any software on the PC other than Mach would often totally screw Mach's pulse engine.
None-the-less many tens of thousands got their CNC start from Mach3 and Machs parallel port engine.
Then came external motion controllers, most famously the UC100 by CNCDrive and the Ethernet SmoothStepper by Warp9TD. Both companies are still manufacturing their
respective devices to this day. Mach (the app) still runs on the PC while the pulse steams are generated by the dedicated hardware in the motion board. This relieves the PC
of generating pulse streams, a function at which it was never very good at. It also meant that you could use a 64 bit OS's like Windows10 and laptops because Mach (the app) is fine with
that, but the PC does not have to support Mach's parallel port pulse engine.
The UC100 is connected to the PC by USB and its output is a DB25 parallel port socket. You might ask well I have a USB to parallel adapter...why does it not work?.
An adapter might work with a printer but its not cannot generate accurate pulse streams, ie IT IS NOT a
motion controller. The UC100 has an FPGA inside and that
makes it way WAY
WAY smarter than any USB to parallel adapter. If a UC100 appeals, and many thousands use one, then buy a genuine one, not some BS
Chinese made copy off Amazon or Ebay. A genuine UC100 is about $120USD, if someones peddling one for less than that stay away from it, its likely fake, sometimes
you can still smell the chop suey on them.
Another alternative that was invented at the same time was the Ethernet SmoothStepper and has been a bit of a standard ever since. I have one and have used it and Mach4 for eight
years. It is Ethernet connected which has better noise immunity than USB and less latency. It also has three parallel port output sockets, ie 51 IO's whereas the UC100
has only one port output with 17 IO's. Lastly the ESS runs at 4Mhz whereas the UC100 runs at 100kHz, making the ESS highly suitable for high resolution servos and encoders.
As you might have guessed it's more expensive too, at $190USD.
There are other motion controllers, like the Hicon by Vital Systems and the CSMIO by CSLabs, but $600 and 600Euro respectively. The PoKeys 57CNC is well priced at around $150
as are some of the UC100's bigger brothers like the UC400 and UC300. There are also some cheap ($20-$30) Chinese made USB controllers called variously RnR and BitSensor....something, something.
They are all clones of each other and in my opinion are all BS. There are plenty who use them and many will object to my characterisation of them....but my opinion is what it
is, whatever someone else thinks. If you choose one of the later...good luck to you....you may find some support but I will not be among them.
All-in-all there are enough motion controllers that you should research and understand, each with advantages and disadvantages. The US and European brands are well supported and
have a very positive commercial history and are my recommendation.
That raises the last question about Mach3 or Mach4. If you want to use a parallel port then Mach3 is really the only choice. There is a Mach4 parallel port called Darwin (written by
none other than Art Fennerty) that has a $25 license fee....but its limited in certain realtime features like lathe threading, THC etc. If you chose a Chinese made motion controller
they are limited to Mach3. There is one Mach4 ready Chinese made controller, XHC, avoid like the plague......its so buggy everyone who has ever bought one has thrown it out.
If you choose a UC100 or an ESS or a PoKeys...or in fact any of the European and US brands they can run Mach3 OR Mach4.
As I have said I've used Mach4 for eight years and its superb, and still growing whereas Mach3 development ceased eight years ago.
Once you leave the emotion aside the try reading this thread:
https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=42891.msg278176#msg278176A motion controller like an ESS and Mach4 and your CNC hobby is going places, and you'll still be using then in ten years which actually make them a cheap
purchase. Lesser brands or software are likely to disappoint and result in you having to buy the real thing later.
Craig
Guest
Show Posts