I used fluidnc a while ago and was pleased with it so when I needed a controller for my cnc I got this. I use it on an old cnc knee mill from the late 80s that I finally got tired of fixing the control on. I'm using the old servos with Gecko servo drives which works well as long as all the terminal connections are done properly. Its all working well, especially for the price, a bit of working bugs out and figuring wifi out but that's to be expected. Next step now that everything works is to clean up the build which will help with reliability as most of the problems I have are with my wiring, the board itself is solid. I was surprised how much more work has gone into fluidnc since last I used it. Previously getting the yaml file figured out was a challenge at first but the online installer now is easy, super nice. I'm very happy with it, the value is hard to beat.

A great upgrade from the all-in-one controller I was using before. The ability to put 48v or more instead of 24v through the motors, the ability to have 4 motors controlling a 3-axis gantry machine plus a rotary axis if I want one, and just the sheer amount of customizability are the huge upsides I was sold on.

It was a bit intimidating since I don't have any background electrical or computer stuff but reading the wiki and browsing help threads on the Discord got me what I needed to switch my cnc over from the XPro V5.

Awesome product.

I decided to switch to FluidNC from grbl, and it's a lot harder to homebrew that. Thankfully, this is purpose-built for FluidNC by the guy who wrote* it. Great software running on great hardware! I like external stepper drivers, so I went this route. As an added bonus, a couple of 5v output ports are built in--you usually have to buy those, and if you are trying to really automate your CNC work, you're going to need them.

It's hard to go wrong with this setup--everything is super-intuitive, and if there is a problem, the hardware is documented within an inch of its life on Github, and FluidNC has an entire, obsessively-complete wiki. And if that's not enough, there is support on Discord. It's not some rando farming responses for stars, or a series of "hey, I had this <exact problem you have>, but now it's fixed" followed by months of silence. It's the guy, whose name you see on this store, answering your questions, asking for info, and then more often than not telling you how to fix it.

On a Saturday, in minutes, in my experience. I almost felt bad about making him work on a weekend, but I figured I'd be lucky if somebody didn't just tell me to put an issue into Github and check my calendar.

In short, buy it and use and enjoy it. It's almost impossible to go wrong.

*I mean, I doubt he wrote it from scratch, but this guy's been leading the way in hobby CNC stuff for ages, so I'm going to pad his resume a bit.

I have purchased a few products from Bart, ranging from his 4 axis SPI controller to the Six Pack board and Multiple Modules. I have run his GRBL ESP_32 firmware on both boards and have since upgraded to FluidNC . I am in no way an expert in programming languages but have a solid mechanical and electrical systems background. Disclaimer, Bart's products do require more than basic knowledge!!!

All of his products and software are well thought out and are more than capable of controlling most Hobby Machines with precision and have the capability to add external equipment with minimal trouble and programming knowledge.

His communication is excellent and is always willing to help troubleshoot any issues you have. Also 99% of the information required to set up the 6 pack is located here.
https://github.com/bdring/6-Pack_CNC_Controller/wiki
The information for setting up FluidNC is located here.
http://wiki.fluidnc.com/

Make sure to read both Wiki's thoroughly and when you think you understand it read it again. I can tell you almost all of the questions you may have are located with in these 2 pages. Most of the issues I experienced were self induced and the solutions were often just Bart pointing me to the proper page. There is also usually very little waiting time for a response as well. Be sure to check the FluidNC Discord Channel for more specific and detailed issue work throughs and ideas.

https://discord.gg/RsFGCAEF

Remember also Bart and Mitch Bradley have put tons of time into porting GRBL to GRBL ESP32 and FluidNC and have kept it open source for the community. Make sure to support/ donate to them on GITHUB
https://github.com/bdring
https://github.com/MitchBradley

I recently purchased this external driver version of the 6-pack controller (bare, without ESP32 dev board). It arrived quickly and in good condition. I have a fair amount of experience with programming and using the ESP32 devices and others, and with general electronics. Once I found the correct 38-pin version of the ESP-32 dev board (many are not 38-pin), programming with FluidNC was easily accomplished. A look through the example configuration files gave a basic YAML configuration to begin with. After a few tweaks it was simple to upload it via the web interface and set it as default. The literature that Mr. Dring has generated in the various wikis for the software and for the boards is pretty extensive and certainly simplified the task.
Rather than buying the pre-built module(s) for spindle control, I put together a 0-10 volt module and a RS485 module to try each with my Huanyang spindle inverter, following the basic instructions and schematics. Both function fine and can be controlled via FluidNC. I'm sure the pre-built modules would work well too, since they are using much the same circuitry.
I'm still waiting for my external motor driver modules to arrive from the supplier, but I have little doubt that they will work fine with this board.
I have two suggestions for later revisions. First, add a fuse and perhaps a reverse polarity diode (or a bridge rectifier) to the motor power input. Mark the polarity clearly on the top silk-screen print. Currently, the power input connector polarity is unmarked except for the tiny print on the underside of the board, and a mistake would be very easy to make. Second, although the pullup resistors to the 5 volt line and the common ground connection for the six input opto-isolators can make some uses easier, bringing the bare LED connections out instead (or making the grounds and pullups jumper-selectable for each device) would give a lot more flexibility - particularly for interfacing with higher voltage inductive sensors - and would allow for true isolation from the board rather than sharing supplies and grounds across the "isolation".
All in all, this is a really nice flexible board that makes it easier to put together a multi-axis home CNC or laser in a wide variety of configurations. Mr. Dring has made it possibly to copy the entire design - open-sourcing the schematics and even board files, as well as the excellent FluidNC software - but buying a pre-built board allows some support of the project.
Communication would be left un-rated were it possible on this site. The standard of documentation made it unnecessary in this case.