For a quick (hobby) comparison - I have a 2'X4' homemade router table. Using a low cost controller card (HobbyCNC) through the parallel port, I can drive three axis powered by 200oz-in stepper motors. This setup can drive the steppers to over 400ipm, but my mechanical limitations (binding, poor building, crud,etc) keeps me at ~90-100 ipm on the X and Y. Add microstepping (1/4) and I run at 60 IPM.
I use 8 or 9 wires from the cable. With this setup I do NOT control Spindle (on/off switch) Spindle speed Homing Limits Position feedback. If I added all those, I would quickly eat up the available cabling. For me, the set up is fine - its a hobby machine (my wife wonders if I will make anything with it). It sounds like the Anilam control had a few bells and whistles that are easily handled by EMC. But from all I read on the numerous emails and forums, for the little extra cost up front, it sounds like you would be better off going with an FPGA card and letting your machine run closer to its mechanical limits and not those of the computer (anilam or EMC thru the parallel port). my 2 cents. Brian ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry® Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9-12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconf _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
