Hi Rich,
I can't answer the lathe question, I don't use either Mach3 or Mach4.

The initial set-up problems, minor programming tweaks like Russ is dealing with at the moment, I will  guess take
20 odd hours, in fits and starts over a couple of weeks, as least that's what I did.

I would estimate another 100 hours or so studying  before Lua starts to make sense and probably another 100 hours
or so to get comfortable with the modular structure of Mach. How soon that can be achieved depends on how dedicated
you are. It took me about three months to assimilate all that info. While its still only scratching the surface I found by
that time I was deriving immense satisfaction from the pursuit. While its not the same as making parts, if you consider
the value of a hobby to be what you learn in its pursuit the 'learning' Mach has been good for me.

200-300 hours solid learning is not an insurmountable investment in time but neither is it insubstantial.

Craig

Hi Rich,
by the way with the screen editor built in making your own screens is pretty straight forward and easy.

Craig

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.

And yes, I agree with Russ. The most basic stuff should (and to my knowledge will be) shored up. But I will also say.......

expected to respond as expected

is relative. Depends a lot on where the expectations come from.

Hi Chaoticone,
I'm group 1 and proud of it...all group 1's unite...all go insane together and beat the rush! LOL

As you say genuine CNC enthusiasts will eventually come to Mach4 being so much more capable eventually.

The group 2 types are very likely to hate Mach4 as Mach4 definitely requires some study and application.
For these individuals having all the most basic stuff work seamlessly is important. In this regard I believe that NFS
are  guilty of not making sure that their experience is as trouble free as possible. Various forum contributors
have made available solutions to many of the simplest Mach4 shortcomings and yet NFS have not incorperated those
solutions into later builds. Likewise having the documentation fall behind the actual state of Mach4 is causing some
to lose interest.

I understand that NFS need to concentrate on those matters which result in OEM and Industrial sales but to leave
a chunk of Hobby users adrift invites less uptake which may have long term consequences. NFS is a private business
and it is certainly not my place to cast aspersions on the business plans of others. Please accept my apologies if it
appears I trying to do just that. My needs are best met by NFS prospering and continuing to develop market
leading products, widespread uptake of Mach4 by hobby users seems to me to be a worthwhile business goal.

Craig

Lol, the crazy train left the station a long time ago........

I agree it needs to be as smooth as possible. But again, that is very dependent on several factors. NFS can't carry the weight of all of it. There is a very big difference in something not working, and not working as expected too. A lot of times i see issues with the expectation. Not all the time but lots of times it doesn't work as expected but works exactly as it was meant to and is verified by the docs.

Docs will always lag behind. no way around it but needs to be minimized as much as possible.

Various forum contributors
have made available solutions to many of the simplest Mach4 shortcomings

Where at? If someone wants to make a list and get it to me, I'll have a look. Can't make any promises but will look and go from there.

Hi,
your right there is a big difference between not working and not working as expected. I have seen others fall into that trap and have done so myself.

Would you consider small additions to the API notes. Often the notes are so short and terse that they are not as meaningful as they could be.
I had occasion to raise a support ticket because I couldn't get an API to run (mc.SignalWait) to find that there is a restriction on the signal ID. My query was answered
but no addition was made to the notes on that particular API and I find that several months later I'm answering the same question on the forum from some other
frustrated user. Had a simple addition been made to the notes at the time the problem would not have recurred. I think RT has a similar example, a one keystroke edit
would save future users  some frustration.

We are lead to believe that Mach4 is evolving yet very simple additions and tweaks are not finding their way into later builds.

Craig

Hi,

I didn't run m4 for about a year. Before I loved to work on my own screen, learned lua and created extensions ...
Now I installed the most recent hobby-version and m4 comes up, but as soon as I change to edit mode, I see a crash.
As my message stayed without feedback, I thought: may be it crashes only with my screen.
... and yes: with the provided screens I can enter edit mode, but with my selfbuilt screen it crashes.

So I looked for hints about changes, I have to care about, but there's no history file, no readme and no caution.txt ...

Seems as if I have to throw away my work and start over again. That's not really attractive.
From my point of view, I expect professional software to offer an upgrade-path like the app is able to read an older screen format and writes the current version.
I don't see any way to find out, what tears m4 down - even if I compare both xml-files with a diff-viewer.

So for me it looks like m4 is developed for industrial customers and hobby-users have to live with the giveaways

Reinhard

Hi Reinhard,
as far as I can tell you can't read a screen .set file, its compiled and so there is no way to compare the files side by side to see which one differs.

I to am using the latest build of Mach but the screenset is a personalised copy of wx4.set from a build about 14-15 months ago and it works with the current
build. I would guess therefore that your screenset is corrupt rather than incompatible.

I am intrigued... what is it about this situation that causes you to blame the difference between Hobby and Industrial? If a file is corrupt surely it will be corrupt
and unusable by both?

Craig

Hi Craig,

as far as I can tell you can't read a screen .set file

the screen-file is just a zip archive with the screen.xml at root level and a directory containing the images. It can be read by all tools, that can handle zip archives and there's no problem, change anything inside the screen file. On linux systems, the file will be recognized as zip-archive without the need of renaming it.

I would guess therefore that your screenset is corrupt rather than incompatible.

No, I'm really sure, that the screen file is not corrupt!
So there has to be some incompatibility. But I don't have the tools to figure it out.

what is it about this situation that causes you to blame the difference between Hobby and Industrial?

I reported several bugs here in forum, as well as at support-mail - the time I dedicated at m4 none of my issues has been adressed by an update and I never got feedback from support-mail. I wanted to check the most recent version to see, whether any issue has been resolved, but if my whole work is rubbish now, I'm not very attracted to test any more with m4.
Additionally I translated the german files and sent them at support mail - but those translations did not find the way back in hobby-installation.

XP is said to be dead and after awaiting a whole year, there's stil no linux-version arising ...

So I'm a bit disappointed.

Reinhard