People find that the Mac operating system is easy to use and at the core of the Mac operating system is a UNIX system. I find that the Ubuntu Linux is pretty easy to use. It's all graphical/icon based just like Windows/Mac operating systems. I looked at Mach3 but I decided to use Linux/EMC2 on an old 1GHz PC to control my Taig mill. I do use the Vectric software suite on my Windows PC to generate gcode and then copy the code over onto a USB flash drive, take it to the garage and load it up on my Linux machine.
If you're handy with electronics, you can get new stepper motors 280oz-in for around $35, centent drives for $50ish or keling drives, power supply, controller pc, wires, connectors, etc. for maybe $300. |