Well,
I hooked the CUSB I ordered to a machine I am building, not CNC related. I was intending to use the CUSB as a stand alone controller, which seemed like a good idea because it can do all the things my machine needs, so no mach3 or modbus needed for this one.
Programming was a breeze, I had the thing do what I wanted before I even got it, and I only learned BASIC programing in junior high, a years worth.
It is a simple program, it operates an indexing table with 5 stations, and the program controls the indexing, each of the actuators on each station, and keeps track of which station has a piece in case one failed to feed to the table.
Only problem I got, is that the command that is used to move steppers (STEPPULSE), which you can add as an argument the frequency of pulses and the number of steps to be outputted, does not have a ramping acceleration, so every time the stepper starts and stops there is a random number of steps lost in the process. I have my stepper motor correctly sized and the load to motor inertia ratio is kept well under 10.
It seems that the STEPPULSE command is fairly new, and that software engineers do not alwas knows what the application engineers need for proper application. So they do not know that ramping is Needed for accurate possitioning.
So I guess I will be using Mach3 to do the movement while the guys at Comfile Tech implement ramping.
I just dont know If i should interphase the cubloc and mach3 through modbus (I dont have a clue on even how to start doing that), or just send mach an input, have mach do the movent, and when finished send an output to the CUSB to do the rest.
So my advise to people considering this to do a toolchanger where the CUBLOC does the stepper movement, is wait till ramping is implemented, or if you can live with slow stepping rates, (about 180Hz) to do the stepping, then you can use it.
Over all, its a good product, good quality, easy to use, well documented, and lots of modularity.
Regards
Fernando