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Hi,
I am new to CNC & will be receiving my new CNC this month for guitar building.
We are looking at either Mach3 or the UCNC software now.
Does anyone have any views about what to go with?
+`s & -`s of each software, even though UCCNC is fairly new to the market?
Any advice is appreciated.
Thank you,
RMC
I only have exp. with Mach so just a quick +/-:
- 100kHz max freq (on my computer about 85kHz) (might not be a con if that's enough for you)
- can "mess up" -> complete re-install needed
- when changing some settings, Mach3 has to be shut down & restarted to make them permanent.(in case of power failure etc)
+ very reliable (within specs)
+ customizable for your needs (screens, scripts, brains)
+ "mature" software, with most problems solved & lots of options in settings.
Hub
mach 3 can be used with parallel ports and a variety of usb or either net controls . uccnc can only be used with their hardware .
Mach pretty much covers the typical g codes that are needed . Uccnc is missing a number of codes g18 g19 , g40 g41 g42 g99.
Uccnc is supposed to be faster than mach but I personally can't test that because uc would probably crash my mills fast due to the missing codes .
I can't speak for the stability of uc but I find mach to be quite stable . The computers for my mills rarely get shut down and mach is always running , I can leave the mills for a week and they are ready to go without any hiccups . One mill does get jittery every few weeks so I need to reboot but I blame the pc and not mach for that problem .
I use the uc hardware with mach and I considered giving the software a try but it won't do what I need . I was looking to do some upgrades in hopes that I could knock back my cycle times . The better solution was simply to buy a few more mills vs the few minutes that I can shave of an hour of machine time
If I was starting fresh then I wouldn't bother with either and I'd go straight for mach 4 , I'm sure there are some bugs to work out because its new , and though i don't like the looks of it , It is pretty clean looking and a lot of good thought has gone into it's development .