Hi, i am slowly preparing to become an active emc user. I'd finally like to build something USB based as already discussed on the developer list, but before that i'd rather use some printer port solution to get a working setup. The PC i am going to use is working and the live cd seems to work reliably after adding the smi patch. I also have a nice 8" svga tft screen with touchscreen that works nicely with the live-cd. Actually "touching" the buttons in the axis gui is very cool ...
I am now thinking about getting a CNC-enabled Proxxon MF70. This one is delivered with the emis smc800 card as mentioned in at least two other threads in this list. Those rather short conversations quickly ended with "this would be rather complex". I am not convinced that it's really that complex. The smc800 uses 2 data lines of the printer port to select one of its three axes. Doing subsequent writes to the remaining bits causes the bits being written to be latched in one of the three axis registers. These latched bits then drive the motors coils. In order to actually drive a motor, you periodically cycle these bits through eight patterns making the motor spin. This cannot be directly driven by the current stepper driver as i understand. But making it work should imho be rather simple. Currently the "step" and "direction" bits are directly forwarded to the printer port. The smc800 would just require some tiny addintional software layer that takes the direction and step bits, keeps an internal counter which is being updated based on the step and direction info. And whenever such a counter changes, it writes a control pattern for the related axis to the printer port. Either i am missing something really important here or it should be fairly simple to support the smc800. Till ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
