[MechWerks]

I built a plasma cutting table similar to the TorchMate design. It uses a Stepperworld controller board that runs from a PC parallel port. I have gotten the machine to run with a couple of different programs but am not entirely happy with the current results.
Can someone recommend software for the:
Controller? (step/direction via parallel port from CAM files)
CAM? (better suited for plasma, includes things like lead-in, kerf, chain cutting)
A lot of the software out there is price over what I have in the whole machine. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[vacpress]

The artofcnc.ca Mach2 software is $150 and it has plasma cutting abilities. It also runs stepers through parallel port. In the mach2 documentation pdf there is even a schematic and detials on a torch-height adjustment feature. many users seem to really like artofcnc software.

for CAM I dont have any idea. id imagine for Plasma cutting, you need to mostly follow DXF lines. no 3d anything.. you can try importing DXF right into mach2. the demo version runs 2000 lines of code, so thats enough to do a bunch of tests.

good luck