Dan,
You mentioned the cost of a new memory board is $1000. For that kind of money you can easily do a retrofit to Mach3. Interfacing to Mach is not difficult, especially with all the different vendors supplying breakout boards for it. If your amps and motors are in good condition use them before looking at any alternatives.
Speed mainly depends on how many pulses/inch or mm you need for machining. Mach is good for 45KHz which can give you about 135ipm with a 0.200 lead screw and a 1000 line encoder on the screw. This means you have a minimum resolution of about 0.00005, which should be fine enough for most applications. For greater speeds change your encoder, screw, or get an external pulsing engine for Mach3.
Regards,
Trevor |