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Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Motion plugin for virtual hardware(for tests) - lets share our knowledge
« on: June 28, 2011, 07:52:43 PM »
Hi all, I'm new to the forum, I met and spoke with Brian Barker at the recent CNC Workshop in Michigan and he mentioned that he had an example plug in for sending data to an external (USB) pulsing engine. Since this seems to be the way to make contact I'll try here first. The CNC Workshop was a lot of fun. I would highly recommend it for any CNC hobbyist!
Similar to a lot of other people in this thread, I'm interested in rolling my own pulsing engine. (or at least looking at what it would take to do so) The particular hardware that I am looking at using is an ATMEL XMEGA processor with an FTDI USB interface. I've got several breadboards with this processor and an FTDI Serial and Parallel interfaces left over from a recent project where I work, and they just look like a solution waiting for an answer. The XMEGA had a lot of really nice timers in it that look like they are begging to become a pulse engine...
What I'm probably looking for is an example of how the data would be send to a USB port which contained pulses per time period. I think I saw mentioned a 4 ms frame time in a previous post.
What will most likely happen is that I'll look at it for a while and then go buy a smooth stepper. But I'd kind of like to know how it all works and maybe take a stab at it myself.
So thanks in advance!
Similar to a lot of other people in this thread, I'm interested in rolling my own pulsing engine. (or at least looking at what it would take to do so) The particular hardware that I am looking at using is an ATMEL XMEGA processor with an FTDI USB interface. I've got several breadboards with this processor and an FTDI Serial and Parallel interfaces left over from a recent project where I work, and they just look like a solution waiting for an answer. The XMEGA had a lot of really nice timers in it that look like they are begging to become a pulse engine...
What I'm probably looking for is an example of how the data would be send to a USB port which contained pulses per time period. I think I saw mentioned a 4 ms frame time in a previous post.
What will most likely happen is that I'll look at it for a while and then go buy a smooth stepper. But I'd kind of like to know how it all works and maybe take a stab at it myself.
So thanks in advance!