[jlawren6]

I'm still in the process of trying to decide whether to go the DIY route of building a CNC router or just to purchase a commercially available router along the lines of Shopbot. One of my potential scenarios would be a hybrid system in which I build the mechanical portion of the router and then purchase the Shopbot control system, motors, and software to drive it (i.e. their development kit). That would result in a stiffer router than the Shopbot (seems to be the biggest complaint on their forums) while providing a proven control system with some warranty (I think) and great support. The downside, of course, being that the Shopbot control system is proprietary and you are limited to using their control software.

Now to my question. Since I have virtually no CNC experience, I don't really have a good basis on which to determine what the tradeoffs would be in using the Shopbot control software versus the other commercially available software options like Mach2, DeskCNC, Ability Systems, etc. Would I be losing any significant functionality with the Shopbot software? From what I've read, it can accept DXF, TIF, G-code, etc. files and convert them to the Shopbot .SBP format. I'm just wondering about things like what type of interopolation it uses, # of lines of look ahead, etc.

I know that a few Shopbot folks have converted to Mach2 and Geckos on their machines and I intend to ask their reasoning for that on the Shopbot forum, but I thought I would also pose the question here. Anyone with any expereince related to this? I would appreciate your feedback or any general comments on this approach.

Thanks,

Jon