Machsupport Forum

Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: rjmorel on April 16, 2012, 10:22:57 PM

Title: can DRO be used to make closed loop system?
Post by: rjmorel on April 16, 2012, 10:22:57 PM
I have a Taiwan BP with Mach3 and Bob Campells nifty box and stepper motors, ball screws, 3 axis running my mill. Is there a way to use the Newall DRO scales to feedback into Mach3 to make it close looped instead of being open loop now. So that the scales would work like the encoders on servo motors and give true position ?   thanks, rj
Title: Re: can DRO be used to make closed loop system?
Post by: BR549 on April 16, 2012, 11:46:23 PM
Can you make it closed loop?  NOPE

Can you wire the scales into MACH3  to monitor axis position? YEP most of the time if they are quad encoders.

(;-) TP



Title: Re: can DRO be used to make closed loop system?
Post by: Hood on April 17, 2012, 03:38:04 AM
Having closed loop on steppers is really a waste of time even if it could be done, when a stepper loses position it is because it is not capable of producing the torque required at that point and it stalls, trying to make it catch up would just stall it all the more.
It could be argued that it could be slowed so it can recover but then things get very complex as you then have to also slow any other axis that is moving at the time and recalculate the trajectory.
If you want closed loop get servos.
As Terry mentioned encoders/scales can be used to monitor position and report errors and throw an E-Stop if it occurs but all that is telling you on a stepper system is your motors are not up to the job you are asking of them so its kind of pointless I would say.
Where encoders may be usefull is if you disable the drives on a regular basis as when you do that both servos and steppers will move, steppers will jump to the next nearest full step, servos dont have any holding torque when the drives are disable so it will depend on the machine and the forces applied to an axis as to how much it will move when a drive is disabled. If you have encoders then you can monitor the position and compare to machine coords and when enabling the drives you can again update the machine coords from the encoder position without having to rehome. Whether that is useful to you will depend on how often you have the drives disabled in a day.

Hood
Title: Re: can DRO be used to make closed loop system?
Post by: rjmorel on April 17, 2012, 01:11:13 PM
"Where encoders may be usefull is if you disable the drives on a regular basis as when you do that both servos and steppers will move, steppers will jump to the next nearest full step"
This I use all the time, rj