Mach 4 ???

[LSEW]

It seems there were a number of folks on this board who went to CF. I was wondering whether anyone went to the Mach4 presentation? If so can you share some details, there seems to be little info available, but as I understand Artsoft was to let the cat out of the bag at CF.

Thanks,
maury

 

[Tin Falcon]

Mach 4 Hobby will be released soon no official date.
Price $200 look for an introductory offer.

scripts and screen mods are made with LUA.
this is a completely new product with the same features as mach 3 .

updates will no longer be free . bug fixes will be no charge.

new program will offer smoother and faster performance.

Mach 4 will run on the warp 9 Ethernet smooth stepper
plug in for USB yet to be released. .

Wizard is now a stand alone conversational programming utility.
Wizards for windows now available linus version upcoming.
it will generate g code for most popular cnc controllers.
cost $ 75
look for the new newfangled web sight.

Tin

 

[Wizard69]

I was also surprised to hear that they intend to support Macs! This could be a good thing as it would lead to a more stable system.


I never did get a straight answer to the one question I had posed. Mach 4 will apparently require good OpenGL support but I didn't get an answer to the question of Intels integrated GPUs being good enough. Maybe they don't know for sure yet or it is a question of expectations.

My impression is that when it is released Mach 4 will have some growing pains. This should be offset by rapid development after the fleshing out period. In that light if you have critical systems you might want to sit back and let somebody else take the arrows.

I suspect the really good point to be taken from this rollout is the cross platform nature of the new version. That might be a good move on their part if the coming implosion at MS is bigger than expected. However they where it clear at all on how Linux support would be developed. It sounded like they wanted somebody else to take the responsibility of distributing and supporting the Linux roll out.

I missed the Friday session and the indication was that the Saturday session was focused on user features and not the "internals". Frankly I would have preferred the internals as much of the UI isn't finished yet. Due to that I can't comment deeply on what was released or talked about Friday.

All of that said I'm not thrilled with their new marketing plans. It will be about the same for hobbiest but for professional users you have a sudden massive increase in cost. This will make Mach 4 much harder to implement in some businesses or contexts.

One other bit of questioning I tried to pursue was PLC support from within Mach 4. I didn't get the type of answer I wanted there either. LUA is not a substitute for PLC ladder logic in my estimation. So PLC support is still an unanswered question. I have nothing against LUA, I just don't see it as a ideal programming language for PLC type control, even plain C does better at such low level stuff. It should make for very nice custom GUIs though.

All in all I think I got more out of the CamBam demo and I was almost asleep in that session. By the way the presenter was fine, I however was not and did not get any sleep the night before. Due to my technical bent I probably would have gotten more out of Fridays presentation.

 

[RonGinger]

I can add some info here.

Mach4Lite is to be sold bundled with a hardware motion device, Smoothstepper, PoKeys, etc Basic 4 axis control for simple routers, mills. No scripting, no Modbus, none of the advanced stuff, just basic CNC for simple devices. Price set by the hardware company that sells it.

Mach4Hobby is to be everything you know in Mach3, sold to hobby users for $200. Some kind of price deal will be made for recent purchasers, details not yet decided. Brian is really sincere in support of the hobby guys and giving them the best deal he can, and still stay in business. This is running now, but needs motion control device support. Ethernet SS works now, USB to come. All of the current motion device companies are working on plug-ins, Dspmc, kflop, gailil, and several I dont recall.

Dont worry about paying for new versions, vs bug fixes. By Brians view Mach2 to Mach3 was an upgrade, all the other releases were bug fixes. It will be a long time before there is a Mach4 upgrade that costs money. Same with the wizards. There will be more wizards, like Plasma, WoodRouter, Turn, etc. Each will cost $75, but you will never need to buy more than 2, then all are free after that. I am not sure which wizard will be next, probably Turn, since I don't have a plasma, and don't do wood, and I will be writing it.

Mach4 commercial is wide open, lots of talk between Brian and Todd, nothing in stone yet.

The use of Lua for I/O is more to replace brains than PLCs. PLCs are modbus devices.

Yes, commercial users will go up a couple hundred dollars, still way under the 10K-20K price for things like fanuc or centroid.

The screen design is new, and will take a bit to learn, but it is so damn cool it will be worth it. Screens now can have all the modern GUI widgets, like tabbed dialogs, list boxes, combo boxes, tree controls, etc. Its dead easy to use, and Lua is not hard. I have played with it, but not written a real screen yet, but like everything else 'real soon now'

The open GL requirement is for a version that has been out for several years, it should not be an issue with any video card.

The linux issue is complicated Brian does not want to get into the linux support business. His best hope is for an OEM to take that on, but he will likely do a rigid, single distribution strategy.