Now back to the question, now that it's established exactly what kind of signal the scales and encoder put out.
What *hardware* do I need to interface them safely with a PC? I've read that it's "simple" to connect "directly" to a parallel port and a garden variety LPT can handle two quadrature inputs. If I get a low profile PCI dual LPT card I'll be good to go for the existing three axes and have a spare input for a 4th axis. I'm not interested in a DIY project to connect the scales. (The rest of the refit/rebuild has been enough DIY already.) I'd like to just buy something to plug into the LPT ports and connect the scales and encoder to the other side - and have it usable with LCNC. Preferably without having a ton of extra features aside from interfacing the scales and encoder. Recommend something? I've searched some and findings range from "Yeah, TTL quadrature outputs can be connected to a parallel port." (without the author giving any specific details) to "Here's a schematic and a BOM, now get out your soldering iron." to "Buy this expensive board that does *anything*, of which you'll only use one function." The BOB I have has I/O for e-stop, spindle on/off and limit switches. That will run off the built in LPT on the PC, or a port on the PCI card if that will work better. (It's a better BOB than the very basic one which came with the steppers, drives and power supplies kit.) Might use the spindle control relay on the BOB to run the lube pump since the VFD has an RS232 connection. (I need to look up software for that, and if LCNC supports whatever comm protocol TECO uses.) Can LCNC work with doing I/O on several LPT and COM ports at the same time? Or is there a single board that plugs into one parallel port, can run up to four stepper drives, read up to four TTL quadrature scale/encoder inputs, has an e-stop input, limit switch inputs for 3 or 4 axes, can control spindle on/off and a lube pump *and nothing more than that*? In other words exactly and only what is required to operate a basic 3 or 4 axis CNC machine tool - without a ton of added cost feature creep. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
