[ne-oublie]

Anyone have experience with these? They look like a well put together system. The 3 axis combo kit with the 620 oz high torque motors, seems to fit what i am looking for. Thanks.

http://www.candcnc.com

[mlabruyere]

I've not used them. Man their site is terrible....they may be great people but man their store front is really bad.....

[ahren]

I'd be skeptical of the 620 oz-in claim for a motor running off of a G251. These drives are only rated to 3.5A. I know the motors that I sell and that Keling sells are pretty much optimized for these Geckos (which are also in the G540), and even stall torque (which is what is usually advertised, despite being a pretty meaningless number) is usually around 400 oz-in.

The packaging is nice, but it looks kind of expensive. The G540 makes things more or less plug and play, so I'd personally go with one of those, a 12.5A power supply, and some motors and pocket the extra $400.

Ahren
www.cncrouterparts.com

[madtownrob]

The system is 10 pounds of flour in a 5 pound sack. Cords everywhere, some on the front, some on the back, some out the side. Needed to get a second PP card to run it with the Pendant. It used both P-ports and and the serial port. I didn't like that it wanted to use the supplied home switches as Normally Open and had a single limit switch connection. You must install a Custom mach interface and pulsing engine on their lock down of Mach3. Have to use mach (not really a problem - but I don't like being tied into their custom build of Mach). I had spoken with the owner concerning the 570's or 620's being on the g250's in Bi-polar SERIAL and he tried to say that the 32*sqrt inductance to calculate the max voltage was incorrect. Cards, wires, and more custom cards - if something went wrong, there was no way I could fix it - it was going to have to go back.

It was nice that it was all put together, the pendant was awesome but couldn't assign custom functions to the buttons, the load material button moved the gantry to a JOB COORDINATE position - so if you wanted it to go to the same spot every time you hit that button, you better make sure you homed your machine and zeroed your job in the same place. I wanted it to go to x47y47 (machine coords)to load a sheet (I have a 4'x4' table) My job coordinates were at 15,15. I ran the job, hit the load material and watched as it hit the limit switches at 300ipm - I guess that's why we use limits! You only make that mistake once! A lot of data was reported back to you such as temp and load of each driver.

I sent mine back and built a g540 system for 60% of the cost, I built it and I trouble shoot it. They were nice to work with and helpful, but it just wasn't for me. YMMV

[ne-oublie]

Thanks guy's , this is the info i need. This is all still very new and confusing to me. There are so many 'kits' out there that it is almost impossible to choose. I am thinking that a 'plug and play' may not deliver what i need. Ahren, i will send you a pm when i get home, thanks.

[Torchhead]

.....I had spoken with the owner concerning the 570's or 620's being on the g250's in Bi-polar SERIAL and he tried to say that the 32*sqrt inductance to calculate the max voltage was incorrect

First the max voltage has nothing to do with the torque. Second the simplistic formula is a "ball park". If inductance alone in a magnetic device (transformer, motor, etc) were the only design factor and predicted actual motor dynamics it would a valid way to evaluate the characteristics. There are dozens of other factors that are part of the design process. You don't start out to design a transformer or motor using inductance as a design goal.

Anytime you try to reduce a complex system to a simple formula you have to throw in a lot of assumptions.

I don't have experience designing motors. I do trust the track record of the guys that source my motors (but I verify with my own real-world testing) . I DO have experience in designing transformers and power systems from 50HZ to 250 KHZ and 5Watts to 50KW in size. I have notebooks filled with formulas from my transformer design days. I can tell you this: Even after using all the tools and knowing what you are doing, the magnetic gods will mess with you. There are just too many variables and too wide a tolerance in components to hit things dead on the first time. Even how you stack and process the metal core becomes a factor. You can wind a core with the same approximate inductance several different ways and get different results.

The 620's are a total redesign to match up to the Gecko Drives. So are the 300 oz-in "short stack" motors that are an option.

We don't sell a lot of the BladeRunners to the small router crowd, because honestly it's more system then they need. The factors that make our system attractive (low cost expansion modules, more inputs and outputs, 5th motor upgrades, and a new easy to setup and service design in the AIO line) are perhaps features simple 3 axis routers don't need and won't use.

While the review of the original BladeRunner is harsh, it's mostly accurate. Because of that, the product and packaging is been completely redesigned. No more tangles of cables and the "10 pounds of flour" are now in a 12 1/2 lb box! The auto-installer has been improved and the manual rewritten. All our documentation is available for download at http://www.CandCNC.com/manuals.htm.

As for the website. It's interesting that I get some negative comments on the website (mostly from web designers that want to sell me their services), but also lots of positive ones. I'm not fooling myself. I know it's far from slick and optimum. I'm the poor slob that did it and keeps it up (aka Webmaster). I would love to completely redo it (and even started several times) but things like support and production take precedence. The sad part is that I wrote, over the course of several years,(in the late 90's) a SQL based commercial E-commerce catalog system and even ran (for a short time) the DOTCOM company that bought the package from me (with alas mostly stock) and now I have a hand coded website because it's all I have time for!

Oh well......

TOM caudle
www.CandCNC.com

[Zygoat]

I've not used them. Man their site is terrible....they may be great people but man their store front is really bad.....

have you been to xylotex's site? i dont think the guy who made that could navigate his way out of a paper bag!

[br1]

Xylotex is a good company I have had no bad issues with there products at all. While there web site may not be to your tastes, the fact remains the company sells a product. And whether you like the web site or not, I believe they are doing very well at selling there product.

[Zygoat]

Xylotex is a good company I have had no bad issues with there products at all. While there web site may not be to your tastes, the fact remains the company sells a product. And whether you like the web site or not, I believe they are doing very well at selling there product.

didnt say anything about the company. i was considering them for my build. just that there website is trash. dont get excited.

[Torchhead]

The only problem with a rock throwing contest is innocent bystanders sometimes get hurt. After a few posts of "your baby is ugly" the focus gets lost and it devolves from there.

I'm not offended by the poor review of my website (www.CandNC.com) and doubt Jeff is on his either. I would like to think buyers are not so shallow as to think the quality or slickness of a website has anything to do with the quality, level of support, manuals or options of a product, which should be the criteria for spending your money.

I would say that over 50% of the on-line buyers will give me a call at some point if nothing else to just confirm there are humans at the other end. I do most of the tech support, both on the phone and on our Yahoo Forum. I don't mind talking to builders about their plans and offering advice. I get to hear some interesting stories and projects. (

TOM caudle
www.CandCNC.com

[Zygoat]

The only problem with a rock throwing contest is innocent bystanders sometimes get hurt. After a few posts of "your baby is ugly" the focus gets lost and it devolves from there.

I'm not offended by the poor review of my website (www.CandNC.com) and doubt Jeff is on his either. I would like to think buyers are not so shallow as to think the quality or slickness of a website has anything to do with the quality, level of support, manuals or options of a product, which should be the criteria for spending your money.

I would say that over 50% of the on-line buyers will give me a call at some point if nothing else to just confirm there are humans at the other end. I do most of the tech support, both on the phone and on our Yahoo Forum. I don't mind talking to builders about their plans and offering advice. I get to hear some interesting stories and projects. (

TOM caudle
www.CandCNC.com

you're right. and i apologize for any implications that either of you were bad companies or that you produce bad products. my original comment was meant as a joke. hopefully it was take as such. i usually think before i speak, but every now and then something slips out.


i do however think that the comments should be taken seriously as a positive criticism. you are indeed fortunate that many of the people that make up your customer base, are not vain and realize that the quality of your website does not equal the quality of your products. however, it is a simple truth that people do make decisions based on appearances. i wish it wasn't the case but it is. it was genuinely difficult for me to find what i was after on xylotex site. you dont want that. parting with ones money is hard enough you want the process to be painless. (ideally, the parts would just fall into the customers lap). i know that is idealistic. but striving towards it will make any business better.

i realize not everyone is a high dollar company with huge budgets to blow on there site. i ran a small computer company form my own site for a while so i understand the challenges. i would be happy to share what i know about building very in-expensive sites, that are also user friendly and professional looking. there are some very good, low cost options out there. (i also would not blame you if you told me to suck rocks.(nuts))

i've said my piece. i suggest that we stop whoring this thread now. anyone can feel free to pm me about anything.

Justin

[GunPilot]

On the subject of sites... I'm honestly a little put off my sites that are too slick and corporate looking, especially if I'm looking for DIY type stuff. It's hard to say exactly where the sweet spot between too slick and too "Frontpage" is, but I'm good with a DIY website for DIY products

All I ask for is a decent shopping cart, take my CC or PP, and give me tracking. Decent photos of the products and specs help too.

I kinda like the Mach3 theme on the C'nCNC site myself

[CyberGolem]

On the subject of sites... I'm honestly a little put off my sites that are too slick and corporate looking, especially if I'm looking for DIY type stuff. It's hard to say exactly where the sweet spot between too slick and too "Frontpage" is, but I'm good with a DIY website for DIY products

All I ask for is a decent shopping cart, take my CC or PP, and give me tracking. Decent photos of the products and specs help too.

I kinda like the Mach3 theme on the C'nCNC site myself

I'm in agreement here and have had two types of experiences with outmoded looking websites: They are either decent vendors purely focused on their product so their websites lack the luster that more up to date sites do, or they are fly-by-night salesman that don't much care about anything than making a dollar.

This thread caught my eye because I'm researching a machine purchase for my shop. Currently the Shopmaster Patriot is at the top of my list. It seems to be a decent machine run by a decent company, albeit, they're branding and company image (i.e. website and print literature) is not as contemporary as others out there. So I hope their business practices and promises are at least honest.

In any case I'd like to know what --ne-oublie-- settled on.

—Chaz

[acondit]

I have a CandCNC mini-IO BOB in my CNC Lathe Controller and had another in my CNC router that I sold. I have only had one problem with the two of them and Tom sent me a replacement BOB right away when I contacted him about the problem. I think he deserves kudos for good service. I wish they still sold this product.

Alan