usb interface

[comet]

HI,
  what is the best value for money/reliability usb interface available at the moment
also has anyone had any expieriance of these mills as they look perfect for cnc conversion:

http://www.sdxyjc.com/en/ZuanXiChuang/248-1.html
 
      Tony

[Tweakie.CNC]

Hi Tony,

I only have experience of one USB device and that is the Smooth Stepper.
For what I need it is brilliant, has good support and active forum discussions, what more could I need ?

Tweakie.

nb. Don't know anything about the mill.

[comet]

Cheers,
   the reason I asked is because the smooth stepper seems a bit short of pins ie if you want to run an encoder wheel?
plus I believe there is no backlash compensation?
 
    Tony

[Hood]

The smoothstepper has the equivalent of 2 parallel ports of I/O and in addition has a further 6 inputs on port 3 of which 3 of those can be differential if your MPG supports it.
Backlash comp has now been done for a while, I would guess at 4 months or more.
Hood

[comet]

so any drawbacks or contenders to the smooth stepper? is the backlash comp a software or hardware upgrade?
     tony

[Hood]

The only other USB device that has users (that I know of) is the KFlop and from what I have read it sounds good.
Some people have had problems with noise and the Smoothstepper, think the majority are down to wiring practices than anything else though but it is definitely more susceptible to noise than the parallel port.
Not sure what you mean regards the backlash comp, I presume its handled in the plugin but cant say for sure, it does seem to work well in the tests I have done.

Hood

[jrobson]

Hi

With Kflop backlash is set in the kmotion software, you use kmotion as a gui to generate your C code then use the plugin in mach.
Hopefully in future they move to ethernet, usb isn't all that.