Hi,
the code base is about five years old. I, unlike you, am not at all surprised that there is only limited market penetration by manufacturers
of Mach4 ready equipment.
Manufacturers of external motion controllers and pendants have to make a major investment in resources to produce a Mach4 compatible
plugin. Remember this investment is against a backdrop of what is still a fairly small market of potential buyers.
This situation is now changing rapidly.
Firstly the number of Mach4 users has grown to the extent that manufacturers are now actively pursuing products to satisfy demand. Three manufacturers
have released Mach4 plugins, CNCDrive, CSLabs and XHC in the last year, with mixed results in some cases but none the less they have made the investment to
participate in the growth of the Mach4 market.
NFS is to be congratulated that they have focused their efforts on development. Some of the features added in the last year alone are the probing module, PMC, the
all new Zero Brane editor/debugger. As a result of the development effort NFS has also weathered some criticism that Hobby users are confronted with the need to do
a fair amount of Lua coding with out of date documentation yet they have persevered with development of new features and increased capability.
I believe the gamble will pay off, Mach4 is now a very attractive solution for OEM and Industrial customers. The high value of such sales should go a long way to secure NFS's
future. As a hobbyist I will continue to benefit from NFS's new developments and their growing commercial strength, and I am of the opinion that the momentum is
building.
I might point out that we, that is you and I, have the opportunity to get in on the action. For instance you have already seen that there is the market for a wireless pendant.
Do you feel the inclination to roll up your sleeves and make one? Any and all genuine enquires are being met by NFS, they are as enthusiastic that manufacturers should be
producing equipment that makes best use of Mach4's strengths.
Anyway welcome aboard! You will have noted that I am a rabidly enthusiastic Mach4 user......
Craig