I'm in the process of planning an upgrade of my CNC systems, prompted by fitting a VFD & 3 phase motor to my Myford which involves moving it and therefore having to disconnect all the CNC cables.  At the moment I have a venerable Dell Win XP desktop tucked under another bench with parallel port drive going through a 2-way switch to the lathe drivers or mill.  I've had the computer for more than 10 years, and I think it probably deserves a quiet retirement before its hard disk crashes! 

To simplify the cabling and as a first step to replacing the computer I'm planning to use a UC100 motion controller on the lathe, leaving the mill using the parallel port.  So 2 M3 profiles, one (lathe) with the UC100 plugin, the other (mill) using the parallel port, staying with Mach3.

So my first question please: can one operate a Mach3 installation in this way?  (Clearly I won't expect both profiles to run concurrently.)

The next step would be to move to a new PC, one of those little mini-PCs with an SSD; and also move to Win10.  That would also involve a second UC100  for the mill and some hardware switchery on the USB connection (as I gather that the UC100 plugin can't cope with two UC100s being connected at the same time).  What's the current position on using Mach3 with WIN10 please?

All suggestions and experiences gratefully received!

John.

Hi,
beware that there are dozens of Chinese ripoff UC100 on Ebay and Amazon, don't get burnt, they are not a patch on the real thing.
But direct from CNCDrive or their distributor.

Given that you are using a parallel port with such limited IO then a UC100 will be OK, but why would you spend that sort of money and NOT get anything extra for it.

For instance a UC400 also from CNCDrive has 34 inputs/outputs for about the same money.

The Ethernet SmoothStepper by Warp9 has 51 inputs and outputs and does require a breakout board or boards in addition to the motion board, but is in many respects a major step
up in performance over a parallel port AND a UC100.

Craig

Thanks for that Craig - I'd seen that there are a lot of ripoffs around.  I have no purpose for any additional i/o so the UC400 and ESS don't really give me anything I need.  What I do need is to replace the control computer and simplify the cabling.

Well, in case anyone else has a similar question, I just installed a UC100 on my lathe controller, and it was a doddle.  XP computer seemed to have the .NET SW needed already installed, just ran the UC inslatter, opened Mach3, another couple of steps, and it was working.  Apart from a bit of tweaking to the Z axis speed all is fine - all the port/pin settings  are the same, the X zero, index pulse and probe all work just as before, as do the tool zeroing macros.

The Mill was still connected to the parallel port, so I fired that up, selected the parallel port when the dialogue came up, and it was operating normally.

So the answer to my first question is YES.

The second question though is open but maybe I'll post that in the WIN10 thread.