Machsupport Forum

Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: Richard905 on March 08, 2009, 10:44:34 PM

Title: Can "Direction" &"Steps" signals be saved and stored in physical "memory"?
Post by: Richard905 on March 08, 2009, 10:44:34 PM

Hi All:

This is just a brainstorm.

Since the role of Mach3 is: Translate G-code into signals of "Direction" and "Steps" to control stepper motors, Can those signals be saved and stored in a physical  "memory"? everytime, while push external "Start" button, CNC-machine run once,...just drectly use those signals.

Thanks,

Richard

Title: Re: Can "Direction" &"Steps" signals be saved and stored in physical "memory"?
Post by: Tweakie.CNC on March 09, 2009, 06:16:55 AM

Whilst it may well be possible to route the LPT output to 'print to file' (as is done with plotters) the code produced (say a different alphabetical letter for each pin pulse) would be massive for even a simple GCode routine.

(I did try something similar to this a while back to convert 'Master CNC' step and direction outputs to GCode before I realized the size of the files produced).

Tweakie.

Title: Re: Can "Direction" &"Steps" signals be saved and stored in physical "memory"?
Post by: jimpinder on March 10, 2009, 05:05:38 AM

I suppose the answer must be yes, but as Tweakie says, with my system producing 60000 pulses per inch, I would end up with a lot of pulses.

A far better system would be a brain, of a short Macro which would produce the same result.

Title: Re: Can "Direction" &"Steps" signals be saved and stored in physical "memory"?
Post by: Richard905 on March 10, 2009, 11:02:17 PM

I'm thinking if  signals of "Direction" and "Steps" can be saved in ROM (read-only-memory), directly used for controlling stepper motors, then we can make many complex motion stuffs.(such as complex motion toys for kids, kids just need push on-button.)

Title: Re: Can "Direction" &"Steps" signals be saved and stored in physical "memory"?
Post by: Tweakie.CNC on March 11, 2009, 03:21:36 AM

Hi Richard,

Would be nice wouldn't it - but as Jim has just implied saving 60k of pulses for every inch of movement for each axis you would need one big ROM.

Tweakie.

Title: Re: Can "Direction" &"Steps" signals be saved and stored in physical "memory"?
Post by: Richard905 on March 11, 2009, 12:54:39 PM

I'd still like a testing, because ROM or flash memory is very cheap today , it's not easy to move  a computer (G-code/software)  anywhere we want.

Could somebody tell me how to do that testing?

Regards,

Richard