Craig I have a question for you about Mach4 vs the Acorn system?  I thought M4 was the answer to all of  M3 problems and it was ready for prime time.  I am now in the middle of going from M3 to M4 with the same Warp9 ESS that worked ok in M3.  Now I am wondering?  Is the new Acorn being so highly promoted on various Forums, really that much better? Its more money to switch over and I am just a semi-professional  using on a  4x4 foot commercially made USA router. I do sell my work from time to time and I need something I can depend on.

Hi,
I have no experience with the Acorn system. From what I have read it is a polished and work ready system.

If you had the ESS and Mach3 working to your satisfaction then the ESS and Mach4 will be at least as good, and in
some circumstances better.

When all said and done both Mach3 AND Mach4 are GCode interpreters and trajectory planners. They take Gcode,
decode it and send P(osition)V(elocity) over T(ime) data to the motion controller. They support essentially identical
Gcode and so they perform nearly identically when running Gcode jobs.

The real advantage of Mach4 over Mach3 is its ability to be customized. Given you have a standard design router it
may well be that you need little or no customization at all. Therefore the strength of Mach4 will not be immediately
apparent.

Mach4 achieves its flexibility by a happy confluence of several design features. Mach is modular, and individual modules
can be added, subtracted or modified WITHOUT screwing up the rest of Mach4. This was a major failing of Mach3, you fix
one problem but break two other features elsewhere in the program. Mach4 has a consistent API, there again a marked
improvement over Mach3 which has a confusing set of attribute addressing modes depending on the 'era' that section
during which Mach3 was coded. Mach4 uses Lua which is a small, fast multi paradigm scripting language. The language is
deceptively simple but has a unique set of features that allow procedural, object oriented, functional and constraint
paradigms to be coded.

Depending on your ability and/or inclination those design features may not mean much to you.  My opinion of the balance
of the features and the flexibility it confers is make Mach4 the most flexible Windows CNC solution on the planet. Notwithstanding
the good feedback from UCCNC users I still believe Mach4 exceeds UCCNC in terms of customization.

The only true competitor, in terms of customization, is LinuxCNC. Of course Linux is not every ones cup of tea and coding in
C/C++ is not trivial either. None the less LinuxCNC has been adopted by OEMs and modified and polished into a highly
functional CNC solution. Haas controllers are probably the leading example of how LinuxCNC can be adapted.

Thus if I were an OEM looking for a CNC software solution that I could adapt and integrate into my machines there are two
preeminent choices, Mach4 or LinuxCNC. That reduces to the choice between a buffered Windows solution or a low jitter
realtime Linux solution. The question of 'Linux vs Windows' is a whole debate in itself. I personally am familiar with Windows
and therefore choose Mach4 as my solution.

The truth is, of course I'm no OEM and neither are you, and therefore is all the flexibility that Mach4 offers actually required?
In my case the answer is no......but I like it none the less. If you also answer 'no, that kind of flexibility it not what I need or
want' then your choices of CNC software solutions expands somewhat, certainly UCCNC comes into consideration as does
Acorn.

My only misgivings about UCCNC and Acorn are that they are a single proprietary solution (software and hardware),
that is to say if you adopt Acorn say then you are obliged to play their way....and pay accordingly. I don't mean to
suggest that either company is about to 'entrap' customers for profit nor that NFS and supporting hardware manufacturers
can't do the same thing. That is a matter for you to decide. The history of NFS and Warp9TD, the two manufacturers
of my CNC solution is amply demonstrated for me to purchase from them.

You might ask why have NFS gone about developing Mach4 in the way that they have.....all in all Mach4 does not have a good
name from either new converts or those updating from Mach3, to such people Mach4 seems overly complicated.

My contention, and this is my own opinion only, is that NFS need OEM customers to survive as a business. You and I might
buy one Mach4Hobby license each for $400 combined as a one off sale. An OEM might buy five Mach4Industrial licenses
a month for $7000. Bryanna and others have stated that NFS values Hobby customers, and their continued support of
this forum and continual updates to Mach4 at very generous licensing conditions prove it. None the less NFS must look
to the development of Mach4 in such a manner that they can attract OEM customers. That is the driving force behind
the development strategies and priorities of Mach4.....and I love it!!

I do sell my work from time to time and I need something I can depend on.

My opinion is that Mach4 is  more reliable and better supported than Mach3. If Mach3 has been adequate in the past then
Mach4 will be at least as good in the future. If you do not require any or very little customization, or are prepared to pay for it,
then Acorn is a reasonable choice.

Craig

Thank you for a very informative answer, it helps a lot.

Craig, Awesome Reply.


For anyone curious about where I am at on some of the original questions:

1) The signal script contains a short chuck of code that says "if the button is pressed, extend the drawbar, if the button is released, retract the cylinder and start a 500ms timer to turn off the solenoid" Apparently this gets scanned when exiting the Configure/Control menu and since the button is off, the retract solenoid fires. Doesn't seem to happen every time. I will figure out a way to interlock this so it doesn't happen, but it doesn't cause harm other than a startling pop when the solenoid fires.

2) This was a big deal to me when it was happening, but I have been unsuccessful in recreating the problem since I posted this. I'm chalking it up to a glitch in Mach/ESS that hasn't happened again. I am using the home to marker/Index feature of the ESS and love the functionality. It repeats to the .0001 on the DRO's, where the limit switches themselves are not nearly that accurate (nor do they need to be). I'm crossing my fingers I no longer have homing/limit issues.

3) This is still a big issue for me. Any M03/M04/M05 call in the code causes a clunk or two when accelerating, changing speeds, or decelerating. This behavior is seen using MDI or GCode, but it doesn't seem to happen with the M03 button on screen (although I could be wrong on that). This used to fault my drives on an overvoltage which tells me the pulse train was delayed ever slightly and the drives responded by attempting to instantaneously decelerate.

The Allen Bradley Ultra 3000's I am using have a setting called Slew Limit which sets the maximum acceleration /deceleration that the drive will allow even when the Step/Dir input goes faster, however the correlation of position between Mach and the drive is lost when this limit takes effect, so I would prefer not to use it. I currently have it set at twice the Mach 4 programmed spindle acceleration and it has gotten rid of the overvoltage issue (however I can still hear the clunks in the spindle drivetrain). This issue is not seen/heard on any of the coordinate axes, only the spindle.

If this is only happening with the spindle, and you have an ESS, you should explore
the ability of the ESS to control the spindle acceleration.

Regarding Acorn:
I recently set up an Acorn based system for a friend. The setup was more straight-forward since hardware and software are well integrated. The user interface was was very polished and easy to use. The documentation was very complete.  Whether or not it is the better choice depends on the user. For those who want to tweak, modify, and tailor their system to work exactly the way they want it to, and are willing do the extra work, Mach4 is the better choice. Those who are willing to accept the functions and workflow of the machine more-or-less as-is, and would rather get straight to cutting rather than configuring, Acorn might be the better choice.
That said, despite terrific support from Centroid, my friend was not able to get his system running (thus my involvement). More straight-forward does not mean it is easy.
On an aside: One of the things that happened when I transitioned from Mach 3 to Mach 4 was that I had to learn more about how everything works. In the end I am happy that this led me to a much better understanding of how things happen "under the hood" which has been immensely helpful in all aspects of the work.

My only misgivings about UCCNC and Acorn are that they are a single proprietary solution (software and hardware)

Most UCCNC and Acorn users will tell you that this is a big plus. When the software is updated, the firmware for the hardware is updated along with it.
You're never waiting for the 3rd party hardware manufacturer to update their plugins.

Related to #3 on the original post, I have continued to have some issues with the spindle whenever it is accelerating, changing speeds, or decelerating to a stop. Not sure if it is a wiring, Mach, or ethernet smoothstepper issue, but the servo seems to receive delayed or missing steps which cause significant clunking in the drivetrain and occasionally a drive fault. I have a workaround to limit the servo acceleration at the drive level but this isn't the best fix.

I have a support ticket in with Warp9TD (whose support is A+) so it will be interesting to see where it goes.

Few trends showing what should be a smooth ramp in commanded speed of the spindle motor, but has a dip back to 0rpm which causes aggressive jerking of the spindle:

Note that the graphs are inverted to -5000 rpm due to the drive polarity, but it doesn't make a difference.

Hi,
in my earliest days of Mach (Mach3 and parallel port) I did not have any home switches. It was common for me to 'home
in place' at the center of my table. What I noticed then is I got a small 'blip' each time any axis passed through zero.
It was repeatable.

If the machine were at X=-50mm and I issued an MDI G0 X50 as it passed through zero I could hear it. It did not appear to
lose any steps but I could still hear it.

Not long after when I had fitted home switches and the home now occurs at the lowest lefthand point of my table
I cannot (short of crashing!) pass through X=0 or Y=0 and so have never noticed the problem since.

Could it be that your machine is passing through  its machine home location?

Craig

Warp9TD confirmed the spindle issue I am seeing is some sort of bug. They are working towards a solution.