There have been lots of good points made about Mesa boards here. But after watching the Maker and Reprap movements for the past 15 years or so I have noticed that many people just don't value their time. They will not only spend months designing and building half-assed boards and software to save a few dollars, but also attack anyone that might have a better working idea. Some people with millions of dollars will still haggle or even fight over a few cents since their compulsive obsessive money collection affliction prevents them from passing up some savings of physical currency. They just can't bare to have to pay extra for hardware that will save them time, since they don't value their time like many others do. They aren't doing CNC as a business, so time is even less of an issue. These are the people that will also walk two miles out of their way to save 25 cents on bread or milk. It's obvious when you look at the big picture and add up the costs of time and materials that Mesa boards are not too expensive.
Look at how much the cost of good tooling is. It is far more cost than the machine itself. But again they will never purchase good tooling. The CNC machine itself will be out of square, flex when run and be unreliable. They will have a drawer, I mean cardboard box full of cheaply made tooling that they will attempt to sharpen themselves on a cheaply made out of round grinder and wheel.
This thread's already pretty much useless for it's original purpose but I'll just take a moment to point out some foolish hypocracy....
.......in a forum where a bunch of hobbyists spend a hell of a lot of time building machines......using OPEN SOURCE software that nobody got paid to write......you just went on a rant about how hobbyists must not value their time? Why are you here, could you not catch a sale on a Haas or a Mazak? Let's take a poll of how many people use their LinuxCNC machines to make a net profit, I'm fairly certain you will find that most people meet the definition of "hobbyist" around here.
Most people who have hobbies, have hobbies because they already have enough money and we have an elite machinist such as yourself letting everyone know they are a cheapass because they didn't buy a Mesa card today. Let's not consider the fact that not every machine is a mill or even has the same coordinate system and we can just rant about cheap tooling as if you couldn't build any number of different things that don't even use "tooling" with LinuxCNC.
I will say again, because I probably have more Mesa products than 90% of the people on this forum......That Mesa cards in general are not even remotely close to something I'd consider expensive. I have wrenches that cost more than Mesa cards and whether you want to believe it or not
that's not the point
