Need help choosing a controller/breakout board

Hi Mike, yeah, I totally understand that. I did not go for grizzly as I didnt like the quality, at least the one from ebay is 7x27 and came with brushless belt driven motor preinstalled. Not without the issues though, spindle seems off center, I will have to break that section down to see. But thats exactly why I bought this cheaper one as my first CNC retrofit, I will probably make a lot of mistakes and will learn a lot of stuff. At which point I will then be able to make another one and properly Precision Matthews $3000 model looks very enticing and I have until May before it comes back in stock. I use the machine strictly for my own prototyping as it helps me do that way faster compared to if I send the job to my CNC supplier, and saves money apparently too. Most of my prototypes are super tiny too, so don't need a big one. As far as squareness goes, my bed is around 0.02mm from back to front (not too bad I think), but around 0.15mm delta from left to right. Gotta readjust that for sure. I only had a router before, never a real mill, so this will be fun anyways. Planning to first design and 3d print motor mounts and then redo them in metal right away.

Vladcronos wrote:

Yeah, I am leaning towards that board mainly because it seems the most popular choice, despite it is being so overpriced. As you said, time is also important. I am at the point of just getting that. And yeah, I actually mentioned in my message that I first went through that page and it doesnt list any hardware for home use, if you read that page you will see what I mean, most of stuff is $600+ on that list. I still dont understand why a simple breakout sells for so much money, I will call mesa and probably ask them about this. called them today and they said their technical support guy only comes to work at 2PM PST, which is 5PM EST, pretty ridiculous if you ask me, especially considering that they are working with 1500% profit margins. Wanted to avoid them as much as I can, but oh well...

You are not doing yourself any favours slagging off a company without you understanding the differences in the products that you mention.

They are certainly NOT just simple breakout boards. I would stand back and think about what you are saying.

There is nothing wrong with doing things on a tight budget and you are certainly entitled to your own opinion but you should have your facts straight before posting that this or that product is " a $10 product for $200."
I don't know how much a mach4 license goes for these days but I'm sure for that money you can get a nice used HP or other quality PC with a parallel port and one of those 10$ BOBs, that really are only simple breakout boards, and start out with that.