I picked up an old Stepper Davinci at an auction a while ago to use for pearl inlay work on banjos, finally getting to trying it out. I'm finding that running shapes with curves, the machine "stutters", a jerky sort of motion. As if it's running path segments individually rather than as a smooth curve. I'm working with Illustrator and Fusion360, WindowsXP on IBM Thinkpad with native serial port set at 9600.

I tried a circle - it ran smoothly. Then an ellipse - got stuttering. Adding a few extra anchor points to the circle made it stutter also.

So is this just the way those Davinci controllers work? I know everyone recommends upgrading with a Gecko or such, but I'm not looking for speed, was hoping to be able to use it stock But I'm thinking .020 cutter would never survive that kind of jerky motion.

If I do upgrade to a Gecko, can I use the Techno stepper motors? They seem very substantial, as does everything on the machine, which is why I bought it.

I'm a complete newbie to cnc, enjoying clawing my way up the learning curve. The software was pretty daunting, but once I got the new vocabulary and concepts it became fun. Hope its the same for actually using the machine. I'm a semi-retired professional furniture maker, just making banjos now.

Thanks, Richard