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If you want to have a machine with MACH4 is is not an easy exercise, you have to work at it to get things to work. Hooking up a pendant, again if you search you will find some examples that users have provided on the forum but nothing in the manuals. #Cost of mach 4 license how toYou will not find an example of how to hook up a Hitachi VFD to a spindle using modbus anywhere, yet some people have it working. Example go to the section on modbus, it is all blank. The documentation for MACH4 looks like a very early draft. Just a very well done set of documentation. #Cost of mach 4 license manualsIf you look at the manuals for MACH3 they are huge and very detailed with many examples on how to hook up things write custom code, etc. Probably my biggest complaint about MACH4 is the lack of documentation. This happens to be a deal breaker for many people, but it is really close to "C" so it is not that difficult to learn and there are many examples provided with the software. #Cost of mach 4 license codeYou also will have some new challenges, since they new structure requires you to write code in a new language called LUA. Well not no many are available right now. They guys over at Newfangled Solutions are doing their best to make the new platform solid and with many bells and whistles. I have not purchased my MACH4 licenses but will once the last few hurdles get solved. I also understand the parallel port plugin from Art works just fine. The people on the forum who have been using machines with no issues tend to be the ones with the higher end motion controllers like Vital Systems, they apparently are rock solid with MACH4, but the cost to play with that hardware is pretty high. Many people have reported lots of bugs, several videos up on youtube. They have their own pokeys motion controller called 57PokeysCNC which has a plugin for MACH4. Under Mach4 the latest plugins from POLABS are very buggy and their plugin corrupts the code you put inside your pokey device. My biggest hurdle was getting my pendant to work, which is based on a Pokeys56U device, which works perfect under MACH3. I have all the motion stuff working with the ESS, homing, limits, spindle and they all work great. Several users do have basic machines running with MACH4 and some are using them daily. The new Newfangled Solutions developers have been focused on the commercial side, not a surprise as there is more money on that side. So as you can see they are starting to add more support for motion controllers. Just in the last couple weeks they released the Galil motion controller plugin for another $100. They also have plugins for expensive motion controllers from Vital Systems, PMDX, Polab Pokeys device, and another one from CNC4PC. They also have Art's parallel port plugin which costs $25. I have the ESS, which has a plugin that works it has been updated three times since the first version was released for MACH4. #Cost of mach 4 license fullThere are a hand full of plugins for motion controllers. ![]() Probably the biggest issue on MACH4 is the plugin support. The people over at newfangled solutions are working to get everything working but releases take more than than back in the days when Art was the primary developer. They claim to have rewritten about 95% of all the code in MACH4, so many bugs have been incorporated in the new version. I have been playing with it for the last year trying to get one of my machines to do all the stuff that it did under Mach3, since I really do like the screen set on MACH4 much more than Mach3. I waited a very long time for MACH4 to come out it was promised for years and finally appeared a couple years ago in a limited form. Still for the price I have been able to make some pretty cool presents and in my case it really has just been a hobby. Are there issues with MACH3 absolutely, they stopped providing updates and there are some bugs and anyone who has used it very long has all encountered those unexpected crashes along the way. Art really revolutionized the industry especially on the hobby front with his software. I have been using MACH3 for probably 15 years, shortly after it came out and it has been an amazing piece of software. ![]()
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