I've been curious about the Smooth Stepper for a while now.  I'm thinking about getting one.  I notice that it's sold by:

Warp9td.com (r1.2) $155
cnc4pc.com (ss1) $165
homanndesigns.com (ss-01) $165

Are all three places selling the same version of the same board, or are there differences?  What's the best place to get one?

thanks,
v

Warp9 is the creator of the SS but all should be the same version.

Hi V,

From my point of view Homann Designs is the best place to buy.


All boards sold should be the same version, which is Version 1.2. The firmware that runs on the board is downloaded by Mach3 on startup, so there are no firmware version issues when purchasing the boards.

It probably comes down to service and shipping costs.

Cheers,

Peter.

As others have said Warp9 manufactures the board. There are a few other places that are resellers of them as well. Depending on where you are in the world it might be better to purchase at one place over another. Make sure you get a good quality USB cable with it (not one of the $0.50 cheap imports). I've been using the SmoothStepper since it first came out and selling them nearly as long (I put them in my drive boxes as well.). Check out my website: http://www.soigeneris.com/SmoothStepper-details.aspx the page lets you pick which cables you need to go with your SmoothStepper.

Thanks for the help guys.  I also emailed Warp9 to find out their shipping cost, heard back today.

Three days later.

Kind of confirms my initial impression that this is a great product with poor factory support.  In any event, I was impressed enough with the responsiveness of Homann & Soigeneris that I'm going to take a chance anyway.

Peter, I've heard nothing but rave reviews of your service, but you're kind of distant from me (AZ, USA) so I'm going to see how well Jeff does.

Thanks again for the help, it's appreciated.

cheers,
c

Thanks for the help guys.  I also emailed Warp9 to find out their shipping cost, heard back today.

Three days later.

Kind of confirms my initial impression that this is a great product with poor factory support.

One guy answering 100's of support emails each day whilst trying to also write new plugins is the reason your replies will be slow. Having said that there is a huge user base now as well as the third parties that supply so support from forums or suppliers will likely be fast enough. Also if that route (forum/supplier support) is taken it may free up Gregs time to actually get working on his products
Hood

heard back today. Three days later.

I sent in a rate quote request to both DHL Express and Ocean freight several days ago. Heard back from the ocean freight guys the next day, not a peep from the air freight guys. Sometimes it a human dropping the ball, sometimes the email to/from gets eaten by a spam filter, and sometimes you get 150~200 emails in a day and you just don't get to it as soon as you would like.

Every once in a while I have issues with PayPal screwing up a transaction. Their server hangs up mid process (or the connection dies somewhere in between) and the buyer is stuck not knowing if things went through or not. I think that really stinks all the way around, at least with this new website software I can tell it happened and try to contact them.

My point is that sometimes 'stuff' happens and what matters is that there are people there who will try to make it right. They guys at Warp9 are good people as are most folks in this lower cost CNC market. At any rate I'll climb down from the old soap box and go put your SmoothStepper in the mail