Topics

1

General Mach Discussion / Any good reason NOT to use one switch for home and limits?

« on: October 08, 2012, 02:04:34 PM »

I'm planning to use a single microswitch for home and both end limits for my X and Y axis. I've already mocked it up and run a test by soldering a NC switch onto the parallel lead wires and just triggered it by hand and it seems to do the job nicely. Using this I can have limits on three axes and an E-stop and still have an input left spare.

Any reason not to do it?

2

General Mach Discussion / Microsteps - can less be more or is more always, well, more?

« on: October 05, 2012, 04:13:25 PM »

I'm looking to drive a 10mm pitch ballscrew directly with my 750w servo motor, which is run as a stepper. I have two of these to drive my x and y axes on my mill conversion. For stepping I have options of 200, 400, 500, 1000 steps per rev and 10x microstepping. Clearly, 10k microsteps gives a resolution of 0.001mm per step which is miles finer than this old chinese mill can manage anyway, but it does sound nice and smooth when travelling slow whereas 2000 step/rev which gives me a resolution of 0.01mm/step seems more sensible and gives me faster rapids but it hums quite loudly when moving at slow speeds.

What would you do in my situation?