Hugh Currin wrote: > EMC List: > > I've nearly decided to upgrading my controller from Camtronic drivers > to Geckos. I'm hoping this increases my max speeds and maybe get a > little better torque from the steppers. > > My question for the EMC group is related to Gecko model. The G202 and > G212 are under consideration. They are the same except the G202 ($134) > runs at 10 microstep and the G212 ($168) has selectable full/half/5/10 > microstep. I hate to spend the extra $100 (3 axis) if my computer and > EMC will easily drive the 10 microstep drivers. I'd like to get 40 or > 50 in/min.
To figure this out you need to convert inches per minute to steps (or microsteps) per second. To do that you need to get the machine data and do some math. I think in your last post you said it was a Bridgeport (or clone). That probably means 5 tpi screws. You also said something about 2:1 ratio between motor and screw. So that gives you 10 turns of the motor per inch of travel. I'm assuming you have 200 step/rev motors. At 10 turns per inch, that means 2,000 full steps per inch. With 10x microstepping drives, you will need 20,000 microsteps per inch. Forty inches per minute is 40/60= 0.66 inches per second, or 13,333 microsteps per second. Fifty inches per minute is 50/60=0.83333 inches per second, or 16,667 microsteps per second. > The computer is a 1.0 GHz Pentium III with 386 Mb memory. I suspect > it'll be OK at these speeds but would like someone to confirm this > before I buy the drives. It is now running EMC without problem. I suspect that PC will handle a BASE_PERIOD of 20,000nS without a problem. In theory you could get up to 25,000 steps per second with that base period. In practice it will get a bit ratty at the top of the range, but 16,000 or so should be fine. Regards, John Kasunich ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
