New Spindle Output Option

[skmetal7]

Ok so many of us have been looking into brushless motors from the RC industry to drive our high speed spindles. I was thinking, if you guys could implement the control scheme to drive a brushless motor Electronic Speed Control or ESC. What this ESC needs to run is a modified version of a PWM square wave. Its a 1-2ms pulse every 20ms at 5v. So 1-2ms pulse @ 50Hz (0 rpm @ 1ms, full rpm @ 2ms).  

-____-____-____  <---- 1ms   --___--___--___  <---- 2ms

Also have an arming feature built in since some have a safety feature where they need to have the "throttle" at a certain pulse rate ( 1.5ms or whatever) for a second or so when you first turn it on ( just have a box to enter a wait period, and ms pulse length).  So if mach3 reads an m3 command, it will activate a relay, turning on the spindle ESC. I guess this could be tied into the Dwell feature of mach3... not sure...

Right now I getting help programming an arduino to take mach3's normal square wave and convert it to this control scheme.  But if you can do this, this extra electronics won't be needed.

[David_Web]

I second this.
I was just bout to post the same thing as I have been looking at a cheap motor + driver that would work as a spindle.

Been thinking bout using Arduino or rather Teensy to do the same.
btw what bout using Teensy as an IO extender board? Or someone might have thought of that already.

[DaOne]

I was working on this a while back. Basically it took Machs spindle PWM output and converted it from a 1ms (stopped) to 2ms signal (Full speed). This would allow a hobby speed controller to act as a drive for a brush less motor spindle. Then you were able to add a rpm sensor and even use the PID built into mach to set and maintain speed. I was  also adding phase control with 2 relays so you can switch 2 of the 3 wires around and get cw and ccw control. The hardware was a pic micro with lcd to display output. If there is enough interest I will see what I can do to continue finishing it.

[David_Web]

Any update?

skametal7: Did it work out with Arduino?