I am adding a plastic extruder to me EMC2 controlled desktop mill (with MESA 7i43 card) and am looking for the best way to control the stepper motor for the filament feed. The existing examples (Sam Wong) uses the controller board from the RepRap project (version 1) so is not suitable for my needs. The temperature of the extruder will be controlled via a MSP430 micro and a PID loop, with EMC2 setting/reading it via the serial port, this is just a port of the work from Jeff Epler (http://axis.unpy.net/01198594294).
So far I have thought of three different ways to do this and am looking for advice/best practice on the path to follow. 1) Use the MSP430 to generate the step pulses and set speed via serial. This is similar to the Sam Wong version. 2) Generate a square wave using a HAL component 3) Use a PWM generator in the 7i43 card and vary the frequency to adjust the speed, I think the preferred option is to use the 7i43 to generate the pulses but not sure what the best way to do this would be. Could I use one of the existing STEPGEN modules (how?), do I need to program the PGA to make a special continuous STEPGEN (no experience in doing that) or is PWM the easiest way? Thanks, John ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Planet: dedicated and managed hosting, cloud storage, colocation Stay online with enterprise data centers and the best network in the business Choose flexible plans and management services without long-term contracts Personal 24x7 support from experience hosting pros just a phone call away. http://p.sf.net/sfu/theplanet-com _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
