On Sun, 4 Mar 2012, Bart Libert (EducaSoft) wrote: > Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2012 21:36:03 +0100 > From: "Bart Libert (EducaSoft)" <educas...@gmail.com> > Reply-To: "Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)" > <emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net> > To: "Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)" <emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net> > Subject: [Emc-users] Looking to replace $4000 machine for $400 machine with > same results in emc :) yes its a strange title... > > Dear guys (and possibly girls, why not) > > I have a question which may sound quite newbie, but I can assure I'm > not newbie at all (just newbie in this matter :) > > I am currently building a laser cutter machine and for that I will > need to be able to output pulses between 25kHz and 50kHz (50kHz would > be the max but would be nice to be achievable)
Current software step generation can get to ~50 KHz with EMC but this is with the best possible motherboard latency (this is not neccesarily related to motherboard computing power) Some of the Atom motherboards are capable of this step rate (or close to it) out the parallel port. If you add hardware step generation, there is no practical limit to your step rate (there are at least 2 vendors of Linux supported interface cards that do hardware step generation) > > Now I tried this with EMC on a very high end machine I have here (A > Dual Xeon quadcore machine on a serverboard) and emc is aproximately > capable of doing it. > > > Little detail: Thats a $4000 machine and a little expensive for > controlling a machine :) Its nice for tests but too expensive to put > in the same place as the laser. > > > > > > So... is there any way that I could put some kind of card into my pc > (a regular $400 household machine) which could take care of these > timings, so that I could nicely to 50kHz, but with a lot cheaper PC ? > > > I have heard about these MESA cards, but I don't know at all what they > do and I also don't know if they have to be programmed for > something??? > There are standard configurations that support step/dir and PWM output > > > So any information / hints / links would be very helpfull. > > > If I understand well, then the biggest problem for a pc is to maintain > a steady rate, so maybe there is a solution for that ? > Hardware step generation... > > Kind regards, > And many thanks in advance, > > > Bart > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Virtualization & Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning > Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing > also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. > http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/ > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > Peter Wallace Mesa Electronics (\__/) (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your (")_(") signature to help him gain world domination. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Virtualization & Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
