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