My basic Colinbus/Elektor Profiler

Basic hardware:

Well, I think the hardware is pretty good for the price, looks professional, easy to assemble (although it's a bit of a hassle with the screws mixed between DIN and ISO standards).
The electronics are integrated under the machine, it makes it very convenient, no cables hanging everywhere and so on.

After a few months of use, here is what I can say:

• The spindle it comes with is not good at all (but that was expected, at least you can start milling directly)
• The machine's stiffness is at the limit of what it takes to mill aluminum. It is possible, but you have to be careful otherwise it will vibrate and the mill will break.
• The Z-axis is a bit weak (leading to the stiffness problem mentioned above)
• The motors are not the strongest you can get, but plenty sufficient if you don't need to machine like hell

After a few weeks of tinkering with the original spindle, I bought a Kress 1050 FME-1 and a reinforced mount bracket (http://www.damencnc.com/), what a difference! Milling for real!

Software/control:

I must say that the provided software (Colidrive) is just as everyone on the web says it is: bad.
The user interface is unintuitive, you have no way to see what will happen when you have drawn something or imported a program directly into Colidrive (path simulation).
You need also to go through another of their programs to import G-code or DXF to convert it to a special file format.
The programs are buggy, crash quite often, sometimes during machining.
When it comes to the PCB milling program, Coliliner, the interface is even worse and you also get bugs and crashes...

But this was expected even before I had ordered the profiler. If you search a bit the web, you will see that a whole bunch of people have the same opinion.

My solution to solve the problem: I bought a Profiler Booster2 from Axemotion (for some reason they only show the old one, mine has a parallel port input and a separate usb driver box.
This makes the machine compatible with Mach3, but the kit comes with Galaad, a CAD-CAM program for hobbyists.
I highly recommend this to all Profiler owners !!!!

I will describe Galaad in a separate post, but it does everything: simple CAD, generating toolpaths, piloting the machine, machining PCB, piloting from a complex 3D Gcode file....

Here is a (poor) video of my basic setup: