Messages

121

SmoothStepper USB / Re: SYIL UK + ESS = OMG

« on: January 30, 2014, 08:09:27 AM »

All those taxes pay for the 'free' stuff you get from the government. Don't forget those in positions of power are much smarter than you and thus can better decide how to spend your hard earned money. 

122

SmoothStepper USB / Re: SYIL UK + ESS = OMG

« on: January 21, 2014, 08:53:57 AM »

Or you can order one from a supplier in the USA (like me) and pay a reasonable amount. http://www.soigeneris.com/

123

SmoothStepper USB / Re: Need Advice on Ethernet Smooth Stepper

« on: January 18, 2014, 10:13:49 AM »

I was looking through CandCNC's BOB manual and copied the following.
Is this what you were talking about "Multiplexing Technology" ?

Yes, twenty or so years ago when the parallel port was about it for low cost PC based control multiplexing the parallel port pins was popular. Heck, I built my own multiplexor to run my robots and such at that time. Fast forward to today and microcontrollers that can easily interface with PCs are cheap and plentiful. The ESS gives you three full parallel ports worth of I/O so there is no need for the cumbersome and proprietary multiplexing schemes.

124

SmoothStepper USB / Re: Need Advice on Ethernet Smooth Stepper

« on: January 17, 2014, 10:45:49 PM »

I suspect the reason they say it will not work is because they use 20 year old IO multiplexing technology to try and get more IO from a single parallel port. If your not using their multiplexed IO then it will work just fine as the board has no clue if it is getting signals from a parallel port or a SmoothStepper.

125

General Mach Discussion / Re: Parallel Port Problem

« on: December 02, 2013, 01:53:57 PM »

Roy, if you have room in your control box you can add a SmoothStepper or similar card there. A lot of times folks are not wanting to rewire things or just can't suffer the downtime so they want a 'plug-and-play' solution. Take a look at: http://www.soigeneris.com/motion_control_and_i_o_boards-list.aspx . The SSENC1 and SSENC2 were developed to provide an easy and fast upgrade path for an existing machine controller. While I built the first one about 3-4 years ago they have been very popular this year with most larger companies phasing out XP and moving on to Win7-64bit. (The Ethernet version is the most popular now.)

As I mentioned before there are other, similar boards to the SmoothStepper but it is my favorite since I got my hands on the USB version right after they first came out.

126

General Mach Discussion / Re: Parallel Port Problem

« on: December 02, 2013, 11:55:36 AM »

Most computers, if not all, sold today they come pre loaded with Windows 8. As i understand Mach does not work with Windows 8. Perhaps you can install windows 7, Vista or XP?

Mach works fine with Windows 8. The problem is with the parallel port driver. The solution is to use an external motion control board like the SmoothStepper, CSMSIO, etc.

127

General Mach Discussion / Re: Best simple CAD/CAM software

« on: November 17, 2013, 06:10:16 AM »

Jim, glad to know you are making progress with CamBam. Once you get the idea of the workflow, going from drawing to creating toolpaths to GCode it gets easier. When you click the exit Gcode button in Mach3 it will pull up what ever GCode you have loaded in Mach3 in Notepad. If you don't have the GCode loaded in Mach then it won't bring anything up. You could also load CamBqm on your shop PC as well, just don't try to use CamBam while Mach moving your machine. One other tip is to copy the files from you pen drive to your shop computer, don't run them off the then pen drive; strange things can happen if you do.

128

General Mach Discussion / Re: Best simple CAD/CAM software

« on: November 15, 2013, 02:14:35 PM »

Jim, somewhat like Mach3 the download version is the full version, there is no CD. You can download the file, copy to a thumb drive and install on your other PC. I always suggest starting out with a simple project, like a circular pocket. The CamBam forum is also a great place, a lot of very helpful folks there.

129

General Mach Discussion / Re: Best simple CAD/CAM software

« on: November 14, 2013, 05:01:15 PM »

Jim take a look at CamBam: http://www.soigeneris.com/cambam-details.aspx (my website).

Even though I have a much more expensive package I find myself using CamBam 99% of the time. It does both 2D and 3D operations. Download it and try it out, the trial period is about 40 uses.

130

General Mach Discussion / Re: Is there a low cost alternative Digital Step Drive?

« on: November 09, 2013, 05:07:42 PM »

There are several cheaper drives but none that offer the value for the money spent. Most other stepper drives use off the shelf stepper driver chips that offer only a fraction of the performance of the G250 drives inside the G540. Then if you add in all the ancillaries to get the same feature set: optical isolation, two high current relay drivers, VFD output, charge pump circuit you will spend almost as much money and get lower performance. I have a lot of customers who started with the cheaper boards and when they finally moved up to a G540 (because the cheaper board was not satisfactory or blew up) they are shocked by the performance difference.