Hello, I am James and this is my first post here. I landed here because in 2019 I bought a "Bobs CNC E3" Router. Every time it has been an exercise in extreme frustration, and I gave up and put it away. I have spend over 60 hours this month (August 2023) fiddling, tweaking, tightening, calibrating and chasing GRBL in Arduino, Universal G Code Sender, calibration, etc. etc. just trying to route a test pattern to make a simple high voltage copper clad board for another project. The Z axis plunged through the board and drug through where other traces needed to be, thus ruining the board. Now I am here after stripping that CNC down for parts and ready to start over with an OX Gear CNC. What is the reality of the amount of tweaking, fiddling, calibrating and trouble shooting with an OX, after it is built because that's the fun part, to get it running reliably, dependably and with confidence? I am asking in terms of hours. This last has taken up too much of my time and psychological health. If this is another matter of countless hours chasing errors and alarms and getting UGS to correctly read gcode, and work with GRBL then this is not for me. I would like to know what the actual reality is for this machine. Thanks all for your time and consideration!
If you want a good experience, grab a proven, documented, with detailed build videos OpenBuilds machine - the Ox is almost a decade old, was good in its day, but a proper machine will greatly ease your learning curve. See Machine Kits - OpenBuilds Part Store You can always sell on the old machine to recover some costs, but mixing and matching old and (from the description likely some troublesome) components are a recipe for more lost hours
also, if it dragged through your board, you probably forgot to home the machine see How to 'Fake the home' and Home, Fusion360 and G53 Z moves
