Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] USB options ...

Jon is a very qualified long time poster whose products are very welcome, imho.

I dont use them, fwiw, but have learned a lot from him.

Jon ..
If I wanted a really good, commercial quality system, for linuxcnc, what should I look at ?

Money is of less concern.
24V IO.
Documentation.
Lathes, especially multi axis mill/turn multi -spindle stuff.

Can linuxcnc do subspindle hand-off today ?
With what hw ?

2-4 Mhz step rate ?
20-40 io.

Budget 3000$ for electronics.

Well, there are a couple ways to go.  if you want to provide your own
analog servo amps, then our PPMC set is designed for that.  it has
boards that plug into a backplane so you can mix and match the
functions you need.  There is an encoder counter board, a 16-bit
DAC board (each handles 4 axes) and the Digital I/O board with
16 inputs plus E-stop and positions to mount 8 SSRs.  The basic
set is $780 with one of each type board.  This is not designed
from the ground up for 24 V I/O, but it can be adapted to that.
With 20 - 40 I/O's, it may make sense to use another product for
the I/O part, and use the minimal I/O in the PPMC.  Encoder
count rates above 5 MHz are now supported.

If you intend to stay with step/direction control, we have a
step generator, but the step rate has to stay slightly below
1 MHz.

I'm not sure what "subspindle hand-off" means.  I tried to
look it up, but maybe you can describe exactly what you
want the sub spindle to do.

Jon