Hello,
new to the site and it looks like I have found a lot of talent . I built a great little plasma table from scratch, electronics, water table, and THC. I will put it against aP plasmaCam any day. The old computer I built to run it seems to not like the drivers. Locks up at startup and during a cut. Other mach3 driver won't run. Don't mind buying a new computer to run this machine. My question is, are any of you that have home made tables running Mach 3 using the new USB breakout boards? Are they worth the cost or is 2 PCI printer ports the way to go. I have 2 ports for THC and other inputs. Any info would be appreciated.
Thanks, Mountain Ref
USB Breakout Boards Good or bad?
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MountainRef
- 1 Star Member
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Mon Nov 26, 2012 10:04 am
USB Breakout Boards Good or bad?
4 x 8 homemade table w/water table
Hypertherm 45
301D THC
Mach 3
Sheet Cam
Hypertherm 45
301D THC
Mach 3
Sheet Cam
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trucutcnc
- 2.5 Star Member
- Posts: 144
- Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2012 9:07 pm
Re: USB Breakout Boards Good or bad?
USB in not reliable. It can and will drop the connection any time, especially when electrical noise is present (IE: your plasma cutter). Ethernet is a better option, but it's hard to beat the reliability of the parallel port. Keep in mind that when you use a USB or Ethernet external motion controller, anything related to motion control is up to the motion controllers plugin. Don't be surprised is some of Mach3's advertised capabilities are not supported by an external motion controller. For instance...the USB SmoothStepper does not support Mach3 THC functions.
