Hi,
I found that Mach3 worked, but yes it had bugs. When I started trying to code my own macros however I 'spat the dummy' at
VB, or rather Cypress Enable that Mach3 uses as scripting language. I thought if I'm going to invest the effort to learn a new
coding language I should learn Lua as it was going to last whereas Mach3 and VB are in their sunset years. Ergo I adopted Mach4.
Mach4, at least to start with, is a quite a challenge....but well worth it. By and large it is stable and few bugs.
Mach3 evolved and grew haphazardly over the years, often with new features braking old ones, or relying on 'dodgy' practices,
and as a consequence Mach3 is/was a nightmare to support.
Mach4 on the other hand was designed. It has a clearly defined structure and protocols that allows development without screwing
other parts up.
Mach4 all but relies on an external motion controller. There is a parallel port version for Mach4 called Darwin ($25 license fee applies),
and as good as it is it misses on a lot of realtime supports like lathe threading, realtime THC etc. Darwin is fine if your on a real tight
budget but otherwise best avoided. Aside from anything else Darwin still requires a 32 bit OS, Windows 7 or earlier to run.
Compare that to any of the half dozen or so Mach4 ready motion controllers and they will all run on 64 bit OS's including Windows 10.
When I took up Mach4 I also got an Ethernet SmoothStepper and while it took a bit of effort to set it up initially it proved to be a huge step
up in smoothness and reliability of operation over the parallel port I had been using.
Regrettably my ESS is still just nailed to a piece of wood, I did that as a temporary measure six years ago and it still like that!
'There is nothing so permanent as a temporary measure.'
Craig