[cromebore]

I'm somewhat new to building CNC's, but have a firm enough grasp on them do to my previous work and hobbies.

Right now I am working on three things, two of which I have the same question on. I need a breakout board/ motion controller and have a few questions.
First for reference and explanations, I am strong in the mechanical and electrical (such as motors, not boards) components and how they work.
I have a vague understanding in how breakout boards and stepper drivers work.
I don't have the faintest clue about firmware manipulation.

The first machine is my personal one. It's my first build and has been ongoing for about 6 months now. It's from scratch and of my own design down to the welds in the frame. I "finished (not really)" it about two weeks ago, but I am just not happy with it. I am going to start re-building it, starting with it's biggest problem... It's DDSM3V5.0 usb breakout board (my advise to anybody, NEVER get one of these things.... I can't even begin to explain how many problems there are with it, and I don't even know all of the small (important) things about breakout boards).
So I am looking for some recommendations for some Motion Controllers to replace this junk with and why. I'm looking for something a bit more high end but still reasonable ($100-350 range.)
Also, not as important but some stepper drivers able to fully power nema 34 1090oz/in 5.6 amp stepper motors.
Lastly, I want a higher end machine by the end of this, is it worth me building a cheap but good designated computer for it?

My second project is a CNC lathe upgrade for a client. It's a very small machine with an even smaller budget. I need a cheap (preferably under $50) and probably parallel port breakout board for it.

As for the third one it's just a simple 3D printer to sell for the funding for my CNC and I have no questions on it. Just throwing it out there.

These are some pictures of my CNC build and it's cuts for the fun of it. Sorry about the mess, this things been through two moves and both times I've had about a 4x4 space to build and store all of my parts and tools in as well as I'm in the middle of tearing it apart and re-building it right now...



I apologize about the long post, but this is my first time on this forum and I wanted to kind of introduce myself.
I want to thank anybody in advance for any help they might have.

[ger21]

I'm assuming that you're using Mach3, right?
The most popular motion controller is the Ethernet Smoothstepper.
Most of the high end motion controllers are out of your budget. C Labs makes a 4 axis board that you might want to look at.
Vital Systems has reduced the price of their Hicon board, but some features come at additional cost. These are probably the best two motion controllers for Mach3.

[cromebore]

Thank you for the help. You are right about the Hicon and C lab board being a little out of my budget. Maybe in the future. But for now I'm liking the look of the Ethernet Smoothstepper.