Hi guys was wondering if there are any alternatives to mach3 mach4 that could be used to Control the CNC.

I've tried but cannot get on with Mach3, I previously used ncstudio and found this to be more user friendly.

If anyone knows any other applications that I can control my CNC machine with please let me know

Thanks in advance

Linux CNC, UCCNC?

Thanks for the suggestions, this might sound stupid but will Linux CNC work on Windows pc? Thanks

No! But suitable low spec PCs that can run Ubuntu can be had for not much.

Hi,
you have to use a realtime Linux distro, last time I checked most LinuxCNC users were installing a realtime version of MINT. What the current favourite realtime distro is I don't know.
If you don't like Mach3 then are you any better off with LinuxCNC?

Craig

Check out the Masso G3 stand alone controller.
I'm seriously looking at converting over to Masso to control my machine and just keeping my PC for my CAD work.
CNCnutz has plenty of tutorial videos on Youtube.

As an alternative UCCNC would be my choice.  https://www.cncdrive.com

Tweakie.

Thanks all for the suggestions, had anyone used GRBL? It looks like a simple user interface

Grbl is not an alternative to mach3.  Actually it doesn't have a user interface, it's just a motion controller that takes gcode input and turns it into pulses to drive stepper motors.  There are front ends that can drive grbl but so far as I've been able to find nothing that has the functionality of Mach.  And if you're having  trouble getting mach going you won't find grbl easier.

Though I suggest linuxcnc that is probably harder to get going.  I'm fairly sure that it can be downloaded with its own version of Ubuntu,  so no need to have a real time Linux distribution.

Thanks for the information much appreciated. While I appreciate Mach3 can do so much there's just very little I need overall. I need to set it to home offset from machine 0 position, zero z axis to machine bed, load file and adjust speeds and feeds in a simple to follow user interface.