There were suggestions in the past about upgrading to mach4. I thought mach3 was OK and why learn all new stuff?
Well the reason is that mach4 is so much better, it is well worth the learning even for an old fart like me.
It took me a day to get all the settings migrated to mach4 using ESS.
I have been using mach4 for two partial days now and have not had a single hiccup or misfeed which were becoming more common in mach3.
There are so many really cool features most of which I will never use but for accuracy stability and reliability I think mach3 can't come close to mach4.
I wish someone had forced me to change years ago, i would have a lot more hair not pulled out in frustration with mach3.
It is the intermittent undiagnosable behavior of mach 3 that was driving me nuts.
And a big surprise for those who like printed documentation (have satellite internet which makes youtubes pretty much unusable) if you click the help button you can open the help folder with PDFs (and well written ones at that) on every topic you can imagine. I hadn't looked for help files because they are so rare anymore. Brian told me about the help folder.
I was able to eliminate several of my customizations because mach4 does things so well that they are not needed.
As one example, the MDI is a window that you can open instead of the gcode window and run your MDI stuff and then switch to the program run mode. No need to remember to hit escape to get out of the MDI and even crash the program if you hit the wrong keys while in MDI.
Also you can set mach4 to pretty much ignore the keyboard. I am somewhat convinced that at least some of my problems with mach3 were caused by keyboard. The jogging is smooth and entirely predictable, no more broken cutters in setup.
I was having x axis creep and could never find the reason why. Nothing sticking no wiring issues grounds right ESS not USB motion control. It just dithered around enough to be a problem. I don't know if it is that mach4 is smoother and has better acceleration control that my servo motors like better. Who cares, it just works and I am not smiling as Brian was hoping, I have an ear to ear grin.
I think there is no risk in trying mach4. If it doesn't make you happy I bet they would give you a refund and I think the chance of not liking mach4 is about as low as it can be. I never say 0 but pretty darn (did I say darn?) close.
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Best regards, Spencer Chase
67550 Bell Springs Rd.
Garberville, CA 95542 Postal service only.
Laytonville, CA 95454 UPS only.
Spencer@...
(425) 791-0309
