24228
« on: November 03, 2007, 04:45:56 PM »
Depends on the definition of closed loop. If your drives are analogue drives then at the moment your encoders will go to your control, to use Mach you will need the pixies or similar boards so thet the step/dir commands from Mach get converted to analogue for the drives. The pixies take the encoder input and as such keep an eye on where the axis is and if it cant keep it in position it will fault.
Cost is a hard one to say as it will vary from machine to machine and country to country. My Mill cost me about £1500 ($3000) all together including the machine itself, my lathe is going to work out about the same or maybe slightly more. I now have another mill which I am thinking will end up around that kind of cost as well.
Hood