Hello!
I'm in the workings of building a 3 axis vertical mill that can potentially be upgraded with a 4 or 5 axis trunnion table (aka extra height between the table and spindle). However the messy nature of "diy" cnc electronics have me confused to what is actually needed or not. Because of the "upgrading potential" i would like to have my controls to be capable of 5 axis straight away, and therefor i have the UC300eth in mind for a motion controller. I have heard a lot of good things about it, and i would like to use UCCNC over Mach 4 as i have heard it is better than both Mach versions and cheaper as well.
The big and bad problem is the fact that i don't know what's in-between the UC300eth and the stepper-drivers. For the UC300eth you will need a breakout board of some kind. I have understood it as the 5LPT and the MB2 being the two most used. In a video i saw, the 5LPT was connected to one of those ebay parallel bobs. Is that necessary? And for what good?
Would you recommend one bob (for the UC300) over the other and if so, why?
And apart from that; what are the components between UC300eth and the stepperdrivers?