Many years ago now when the UHU DC Servo drive showed up as a collection of TTL parts I started putting together the VHDL code to make it all out of one FPGA. But ultimately for a lathe gear replacement all it did was track a servo motor on the carriage Z axis to a spindle encoder through a series of multiply/divide ratios. Clever but still needed the half nut engaged in order to cut metric threads on an imperial lead screw. It tracked forward and reverse but run out at the end of the thread would have to have the spindle motor stop very quickly.
Instead I ended up designing my E-Leadscrew which, even with only one pulse per rev from the spindle, threads, turns and tapers quite nicely. That was then. This is now and a Beagle with the quadrature counter inputs and PRUs would be a better solution. But the real cost for machine control now is all the hardware. The processor is a fraction of the cost compared to even 10 years ago. And other than a timely interrupt routine, a full Linux port isn't even needed unless... One also wants USB support, Ethernet Support, HDMI to touch screen support and then forget about one person writing it all from scratch on their own. John ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
