Mach4 and G-Rex

[Death Adder]

Hello all, been quite a while since I was on here.

Anyway, I'm interested in retrofitting a broken plasma cutting table (controller has gone wonky... it's an OLD one... L-Tec Series 810 on a CM-250 table)

I'd like to use G-Rex so that I can connect all of the machine's goodies to the G-rex and get better resolution and stability. It would seem that doing that with Mach requires Mach4? Is Mach4 stable enough to use for production plasma cutting right now? (I know it's in beta but how well does it work right now?)

It seems that I can buy a g-rex from gecko at this point in time. I know that people have been saying, in the past, that the grex wasn't out yet but it looks available currently for 208 or 399, depending on which you want.

I'd like to save the servos, the servo drives, and most all of the switches and such on the current control box and just replace the control computer.

Would I be best suited, do you think, to use Mach3 or Mach4? Should I wait for Mach4 to be available in a stable release? Does what I want to do sound reasonable?

I know it's lots of questions but I'm having a hard time deciding what to do. Thanks for any help anyone can offer.

[ger21]

I don't believe that THC is working yet in mach4, so that would probably point you to Mach3, right? Supposedly the latest beta runs pretty well, but it's only been out a few days. But, if you need THC, it may be a while. I don't know much about plasma, but I believe that all current THC boards compatible with Mach3 use a parallel port, and Mach4 does NOT support parallel ports. Does this help? Might be best to email Art with this question.

[h_2_o]

the 208 one is pretty much worthless unless you are a developer of some sort so you are going to have to go with the $400 one.

[Death Adder]

Originally Posted by h_2_o the 208 one is pretty much worthless unless you are a developer of some sort so you are going to have to go with the $400 one.

Yeah I read more on this site and found that out but thanks for the warning because I could have easily been duped. It isn't that clear as to what the difference is on their website.

[h_2_o]

I agree with you 110% on that. i had to talk with them on the phone to actually get all the differences. they really need better documentation on thier site to help users out. BTW good luck with your project.

[Mariss Freimanis]

Sorry. I don't mean to dupe anyone. This is a new product; documentation always lags product development.

Mariss