[joecnc2006]

I take it you are not talking from experiance? and you have not put one of the HobbyCNC boards together. Well as far as Me i have gotten two boards from HobbyCNC and they worked out with no problems at all, If someone Blows a chip it is in my opinion their fault by not following the assembly instructions, you need to follow them and they are not hard at all. The instructions tells you in bold letters to check certain things before proceeding to the next step, and it also causions you about disconnecting things ie. motors while the power supply is on. which will blow a chip. To put it bluntly It is a Hobby Board hence the price, so if you do not follow instructions of course it will mess up on you. Like I said I have Two of them with no problems so for me that is the way to go if like most DIY'ers who want a machine for Hobby and some smaller industrial machines it forks just fine.

Joe

Originally Posted by tintruder Skip the HobbyCNC. There are two very good alternatives to this board which use the same driver chips: http://www.ohmikron.com/ and http://www.cncresource.com/store/ These guys looked at the "state of the art" which used to be the HobbyCNC board (the 7062 chips are pretty new) and improved upon it in terms of form and function. Also, read the posts concerning poor customer support and childish behavior by a certain vendor over at the Yahoo groups "CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO", "DIY-CNC" and then decide. Note that until you buy a HobbyCNC board, you will simply not be granted access to the support group to look at the history of problems in order to make an informed decision about a purchase. You would be surprised how many people have to buy replacement SLA7062 chips from Dave at $15 each (lowered to $12 this week when I posted where they could be purchased for $8). Quite frankly, I believe more profit is (was)earned by the sale of replacement chips than by sales of complete boards. The measure of a company is not how they provide service to those with no problems, but rather how they handle customers who do have difficulty, and here, HobbyCNC simply comes up short. Really short considering price gouging on spares. Seriously, go with Ohmicron, CNCResource, Xylotex, Rutex or Gecko and spare yourself the headaches. I have known Ballendo of CNCResource as an on-line "buddy" for a couple years now and he is a consummate professional who eagerly and freely helps out other hobbyists with advice, information and his time. Phil from Ohmicron has built a website full of free information which will help you build a functional CNC system, plus he answers emails promptly and professionally. I really don't know him well, but so far, I have a very good feeling. On the other hand, Dave only answers until he has your cash. Try emailing him with a support question and he won't answer except to say "go to the Yahoo group". But if you say something he doesn't like there, he'll kick you out and you're SOL for support. Just like the schoolboy who takes his ball and goes home if you don't let him win.