Ted - Thanks for your advice. This helps very much. I have a few more questions below.
> The very first thing you need to do to make informed decisions > is to get as many datasheets as you can; Thanks for the sheet on the drivers. Do you have any advice on how to locate info on the stepper motors? I have googled for the steppers ( eastern air LA34BJK-P500 ) and havent found that model number anywhere. The closest thing I found was at http://www.ni.com/devzone/advisors/motion/eastern.htm but that site does not include the correct model. > Don't stop there - if there are limit switches, get info on them. no limit switches. (bummer) > Spindle drive/controller, same thing. My spindle is only a PorterCable router. There is only a on off switch that is wired to the control panel - in the old controller it wasn't turned on or off by the computer. Someday I may change this - for now I want to see if anything works. > Vacuum stuff? Ditto. The Vacuum runs on compresed air and just has a switch on the front like the router. It was turned on and off manualy. > 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. OK. Not sure what you mean here. What should I consider when making this choice? > Are there limit or home switches? Remote control for the spindle? Speed? > Vacuum platen/hold downs? Toolchanger? Unfortunately no for most of this. There is a switch for vacuum and for the router - but they are basic. I may be able to add a relay for this some time later. > 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). I do have a PC with a parallel port and was planning on using that. I don't know what an external pulse generator board is? (or it that what I already have) Here is what I was planning on doing (is this the right approach?) : 1 - disconnect the cable from the board see: http://www.forsalesticker.com/bboard.jpg The one towards the left with the blue cable comming off. 2 - use a gender changer http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41RD21XB97L._SL500_AA300_.jpg to be able to connect my parallel cable to my computer and to the router. 3 - figure out which wires are step / direction and mark them as such in stepConf 4 - say a prayer 5 - repeat step 4 6 - turn emc on and see if my axis can move > Regardless, make sure you get some form of breakout > or opto-isolation board for protection. sorry. Now I need to ask the stupid questions - What is a breakout board or a opto-isolation board? What do they do? Do you have one you recommend? Thanks Andy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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
