Andy - per your bottom assumption, and the fastest way to get things up and going: yes you'll probably want to remove the serial (if it truly is serial) to step-driver motion controller board from your system. The beauty is that the IB106's (although discontinued) are plain ol' stepper drivers, with step/direction/enable inputs, and are apparently capable of half- or full-step modes.
The very first thing you need to do to make informed decisions is to get as many datasheets as you can; google will be your friend, (although since I had to go and drop by Schneider's website anyway), check out the PDF for the 106: http://www.imshome.com/downloads/datasheets/ib10x.pdf Don't stop there - if there are limit switches, get info on them. Spindle drive/controller, same thing. Vacuum stuff? Ditto. Practically everything in what you are doing is related only to being "on" or "off" - so don't let the electronics spook you. If you look at the system now, without that motion control board, you have a standard 3 axis stepper system. You can choose to buss the enables for each drive together as one, or keep them separate, or for testing just jumper them. You can most likely ( unless the datasheets indicate differently), use the default values from either conf or the stepper sample configs for testing with your hardware. Get one section going first, then add, then add, then add. Are there limit or home switches? Remote control for the spindle? Speed? Vacuum platen/hold downs? Toolchanger? -- Get the table motion going first, then add the remainder to the mix. Put the power for the stepper drivers/spindle on a powerstrip/switch SEPARATE from your computer - this is a temporary "OMG" e-stop until you get a real emergency stop system in place, that doesn't power off your computer. Keep that switch within reach. The next decision you're going to make is whether to use a motherboard/PCI parallel port for control, or go with an external pulse generator board (PPMC/Mesa/etc). For "instant gratification", "lowest budget", "fastest time" - if you have a PC available with a parallel port, I'd recommend that first. (again, start with simple knowns, add more stuff later) Regardless, make sure you get some form of breakout or opto-isolation board for protection. From here on in, you can pretty much follow any (or all) of the stepper-driven projects whether they be micromills or shopmates or anything else with steppers. There are plenty of projects in the wiki that you can learn from. The EMC "Getting Started Guide" includes pretty much a step-by-step recipe for stepper systems. As an aside, and "Not To Be Recommended", but technically you can get a 3-axis stepper system running on only 7 wires (including ground) off the parallel port. More specific answers: driver variables - would actually depend a little more on experimentation given the mass/inertia in your system. Too quick on the pulses or too high an acceleration value and the motors may stall, or the drivers may not even sense it. Too long and the system will be sluggish. Since you have a router, which typically implies wood, you'll need to get your feedrates as high and consistent as possible so you don't burn tools. Leadscrew pitch - in stepconf it's looking for rev/inch (or if you prefer, TPI) - yes, you can count the number of threads per inch, (or in 10 inches, or in 100 inches - depends on what resolution you need) but don't forget to make sure you also include any gearing if it's applicable (there are other fields for that). You can always come back and edit/fine tune the scale values after the fact if necessary. Ted. ========================================= I got an old CNC router (phoenix) from a school district auction and am very eager to get it going. The old interface is using a serial cable and I need figure out how to connect this to EMC. The electronics part is where I am a bit rusty - sorry if I ask obvious questions. Here is the low down: Drivers: IB106 (seehttp://www.forsalesticker.com/drivers.jpg) Steppers: 1.8 deg - Eastern Air Devices LA34BJK-P500 <snip> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable. Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-c2 _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
