[SomeWhatLost]

I don't know why anyone would even want to put one on a Tormach, unless it fell out of the sky for free

well, falling out of the sky for free was kind of the plan... or falling out of the the back of a trailer and then getting run over by a forklift or something along those lines... ie it gets scrapped/cant be sold...
full disclosure, I technically just started working for Heidenhain USA, technically as just a peon in the acu-rite production area, I have no access to pricing or even the TNC's as far as I can tell... I just found their sales sheet thingy on the public web and it sounded cool...
and while there are boxes upon boxes of scales and the like here, I don't think I have seen a single TNC, other than the one on the 5 axis mill in the training room... guess those all come out of HQ in Germany?

and absolutely nothing else was available.

are the really that bad? my only info is based on the publicly available sales sheet thingy, which I am sure is just slightly biased... but it does sound like a cool controller...

It might be better to simply gold plate your mill.

I did consider some gold POR-15 once, does that count?