Hi there. As far as speed is concerned, using a G320 is almost the same as using a stepper, the only difference being that you can choose the number of steps per revolution with a servo, by choosing different encoder reolutions.
On th ebright side, you can mix "true servo" and steppers also. Depending on the speed of your computer, you may be able to use an inexpensive circuit tied to your parallel port, and use PWM output into an analog servo drive. You can count quadrature pulses as well, but you're still CPU bound for that, just like steppers. There are a few relatively inexpensive hardware solutions also. The Pluto-P FPGA board is one of them, at $59 (or $69, I don't recall). <http://www.knjn.com/ShopBoards_Parallel.html>. A more industrial FPGA board, with a much larger FPGA, will be available from Mesa Electronics, the 7I43 <http://www.mesanet.com/parallelcardinfo.html>. This card is supposed to be $89, though that could change once it's released. Of course, you could also use one of the more expensive pieces of servo control hardware, but since cost is an issue, that's probably unimportant right now :) - Steve Ray Henry wrote: >Hi Ian > >Yes you can mix steppers and step-and-direction servo. EMC won't know >the difference but there is an additional step tuning the 320. > >Rayh > > >On Wed, 2007-11-07 at 12:55 +0000, Ian Wright wrote: > > >>Hi, >> >>This is probably a silly question but is it possible to mix stepper and >>servo drives on one machine? I'm a bit tight on funds just now but I >>would really like to get a bit more speed out of my rotary axis so that >>I can use it for screwcutting. I can screwcut on it now using its >>present stepper drive but it is SO pedestrian. I would be thinking of >>using a Gecko 320 which seems to act like a stepper but I'm not sure if >>the axes would still maintain their coordination one to another - am I >>talking rubbish?? >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
