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SmoothStepper USB / Re: How ready for prime time?
« on: June 19, 2008, 01:56:24 PM »
Carl, I have had a Smooth Stepper running my 5' X 10' Ganrty CNC for several months now. I was using 2 LPT ports previously with a spindle speed control board, 4 axis motors(x slaved),Tool height touch probe, MPG, coolant and Vacuum. All running nicely with Mach 3 via the LPT ports with the exception of the speed. My machine needs 36,285 pulses per inch...so I had implemented electronic gearing within my servo drive to get it down by a factor of 5 and could only run at around 372 IPM that way. I literally removed the 2 db-25 cables from my LPT ports on my pc, and plugged them into a ribbon cable adapter then into the smooth stepper, and loaded the smooth stepper plug-in and was right back up to running. The only change was I eliminated the pulse multiplier in the servo drives and changed my steps per inch to actual (36,285) and re-tuned my motors from mach.
Everything worked as expected but now I can rapid @ 1200 IPM which is my servos max rpm, not a limitation of the smooth stepper. The main differences are the homing is slightly different and the software limits do not ramp the motors down to a stop prior to encountering a limit switch. I have not even checked to see if there is an update for this yet. As I said I have been running for a couple of months and have not checked for an update so this feature may be working as it should now but I don't know.
In my case I needed speed with a high steps per inch count, so the SmoothStepper was a perfect solution for me even if I had to give up software limits for a while.
Overall I am very impressed, and the reliability seems to be rock solid as I have had no issues with the usb.
I hope this helps,
Chris
Everything worked as expected but now I can rapid @ 1200 IPM which is my servos max rpm, not a limitation of the smooth stepper. The main differences are the homing is slightly different and the software limits do not ramp the motors down to a stop prior to encountering a limit switch. I have not even checked to see if there is an update for this yet. As I said I have been running for a couple of months and have not checked for an update so this feature may be working as it should now but I don't know.
In my case I needed speed with a high steps per inch count, so the SmoothStepper was a perfect solution for me even if I had to give up software limits for a while.
Overall I am very impressed, and the reliability seems to be rock solid as I have had no issues with the usb.
I hope this helps,
Chris