Hi Charlie,

The ELS was developed on the E-Leadscrew group as a collaborative effort and is 100% open source. ?In? fact it started out with a surface mount processor and single axis control with built in micro-stepper.? With much support from the group it was expanded to have two axis control including a wide variety of tapering profiles and the desire of the members to have a 40 pin DIP socket for easy replacement or upgrade.?

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The first 50 units were sold at cost.? The rest sell for $200 to cover the cost of now more expensive parts due to a low Canadian dollar.? ?Next the LMD18245 Stepper Driver chips went up in price to the point where now far east modules cost less than the chips.? And the bottom plate can't be inexpensively manufactured anymore because the original company that made them is no longer around.? ?

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My ELS has always been a kit for a hobby market. ?Never sold a box for it. I've come up with an innovative method of making keypad covers and legends that many of the users have made.?

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The ELS was also designed to make it easy to move the parallel port DB-25 that attaches to a users's Break Out Board from the ELS to a PC to switch over easily to MACH3 for that occasional CNC project that needs more than the ELS.? (in fact I first tested it with MACH2)

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I'm sure when you blow up your stepper motor driver or processor board or LCD screen that the Chinese manufacturer will replace it at no charge? ?My ELS has a lifetime warranty if you tell me how you broke it.? I replaced one where the end user smoked the traces off the stepper motor driver section after he accidentally hooked up his DC power backwards.? I sent him a new one for the cost of shipping.?

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Given that my ELS has been around for more than a decade and that any google or youtube search creates all sorts of hits I'm surprised you think it's a commercial product or not targeted at hobby users. ?Users on the MACH CNC groups and the LinuxCNC groups are all familiar with my poduct. ?

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Since the programmer circuit is on board anyone can download the free Microchip C compiler and modify the source code.? In fact if you were to look at the source code you'd see that one of the E-Leadscrew members even made modifications to improve certain behaviours. ?I've supported anyone who wants to make changes as it's also well documented.

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I'm all for these different projects but I'm not fond of misinformation about them.

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John Dammeyer

"ELS! Nothing else works as well for your Lathe"

Automation Artisans Inc.

www dot autoartisans dot com

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