Initially I was impressed with the overall build quality, pretty good wiring quality and beefy power supplies and stepper drivers. The UC100 is the result of a 2 years hard development and testing cycle and it implements linear and arc interpolation routines with trajectory planner, communication routines, limits and homing functions handling and it has nearly all the functions (with some limitations) as what Mach3 supports with the LPT port driver.īecause of using a high speed DSP core the UC100 making the interpolations and other timings much more precise as Mach3 could ever do using it's standard LPT port driver and because the time critical tasks are no more done on the PC side, but on the UC100 controller the PC's CPU time usage is much lower and the risk of overloading the PC resources lowers with factors as the UC100 has a long enough data buffer so that it can handle a 100% CPU usage and overload for some seconds without interrupting the motion and the G-code execution.įor these reasons it is also possible to use a much slower and cheaper computer together with the UC100 as what is needed for Mach3 if using the LPT port drivers and this can even lower the system's overall cost.I have been trying to connect my Widows 7, 32 bit Toshiba laptop to my new 6040Z (allegedly-) USB controlled CNC machine. The UC100 has a look as if it was a “simple USB to LPT port converter module”, but it is much more than this. The UC100 controller connects to the PC via the USB port and this kind of port is more modern as an LPT port and exists on all today's computers. The UC100 motion controller overcomes these problems with removing all time critical tasks from the control computer and Windows and executing all these tasks on inside it's own high speed DSP control chip outside the PC. If the computer gets overloaded by Mach3 or by running other software(s) in the background may leads to a lagging of the G-code code execution to even a falter in the motion interpolation which may lead to a catastrophic failure of some applications.Īnother problem with the LPT port is that in today's informatic technology this kind of port is no more used and is a dying out device and non of the new laptops having this kind of port built in anymore. As the output signals frequency gets higher with using todays more and more advanced motor control electronics Mach3 needs the more processor time of the computer. Windows is not a realtime operating system and therefor it is a difficult and CPU time consuming task for Mach3 to generate these signals in a precise manner.

Mach3 in default working the the computer's parallel (printer) port and sending all signals via this port. Mach3 is a popular CNC machine tool control software running on desktop computers and laptops under Windows operating system.

Product description and background of working USB CNC motion controller to use with MACH3 software ,ġ.

Mach3 cnc usb controller