Unfortunately, I don't have current detailed pricing for Beckhoff's lowest end. I, too, wish they would just publish pricing. IIRC, low end beckoff arm contro

Unfortunately, I don't have current detailed pricing for Beckhoff's lowest end. I, too, wish they would just publish pricing. IIRC, low end beckoff arm controllers do get down to 400-500 USD. A CX9020 1GHz A8 based unit, with win embedded compact edition runs about 1000 USD with the runtime. As I understand it, this is the lowest end unit system for basic multi-axis motion control. Keep in mind that this is actually a lot of computational horsepower. When beckhoff says "basic" that means mid range for most other PLC's. For complete honesty... I ended up using a Galil motion controller rather than the Beckhoff ARM unit mentioned above, but that was due to really tight form-factor issues. Technically, the Beckhoff unit would have been better. The overall hardware cost was moreorless a wash between Galil and Beckhoff.