Hood,

Thanks for the PM heads up on this project. I have a few Q's

I understand the differential outputs, but what is the purpose of differential inputs?  Are these foe encoder feedback or something similar?

Can you make these boards capable of being plugged directly onto a smoothstepper?
Incidentally, I know you have the ESS, so I'll sneak in a Q; is the ESS dimentionally similar to the original? i.e. a BOB made to fit the Original will fit the ESS?

How many axis will you have on a single board? Shall I just count the diff outputs and make an assumption?

Edit: I suppose it would be good to ask if you have alreay produced the boards and/or is tweaking a possibility. I am thinking about combining several of my boards into a smoothstepper compatible BOB and there is no sense in re-inventing the wheel. Typically I don't use OP work, but I have seen some boards that you have built in the past and they are high quality.

The diff inputs are for encoder inputs however I will be using  a PoKeys for them now. I will be using this board along with a pokeys as it doesnt just have to be for the ESS. It means I can have a PoKeys with Diff I/O and also 24V I/O. That is  one of the reasons I didnt design it for the ESS to plug into. The other reason I didnt do that is I can mix and match as the board will be cut into three separate boards before I populate them.  I can then choose which boards I want. For example I may want port 1 with the 5v diff and port 2 with 12 out 5 in 24v and port 3 with 4 Out 13 In 24v or I could have the same boards on Port 3 as 2 or even have all ports using the same board whether that be 24v or 5v diff.

I will still likely put the encoder index pulse for the spindle in via the ESS and may also put the spindle encoder in if Greg gets Z sync'd to spindle.

Incidentally the diff I/O board can be used single ended if required, meant I had to add a fair few components to the Inputs but likely will be worth it for the flexibility it will give me as I plan to use it on all my machines and as said also with the Ethernet pokeys.

The Diff board is 12 out and 5 In so potentially 6 axis  Step/Dir.

Yes the ESS is exactly the same footprint as the USB one, difference is Port 3, on the USB its 6 Inputs (3 being Diff) but the ESS has a full parallel port worth of I/O but none diff.

Any board currently made for the USB SS to plug into would be fine with the ESS as they all just had the two sockets for port 1 and 2. so if using one of them you would be able to add a ribbon to port 3 and take it to a single BOB or whatever.
Hood

Oh also MPG will likely be put in via the ESS so that would be put in as differential.
Hood

Thanks for the info.

You mention 24V inputs and from that I am assuming that you do not have isolation on the I/O.

What I did was isolate everything so it does not matter if the signals are 5V, 12V, 24V or actually any voltage up to the opto's rating. I this way, you do not have to have different components or different boards and the drives are 100% protected.

The 24v's I/O are isolated, changing resistors would be needed to change the inputs voltage, could be done but as they are primarily for me and a few friends we all use 24v so no need. Outputs are solid state relays so any voltage (within relays specs) could potentially be used on them I would think.

Hood

Starting again on the wee lathe.
Have decided not to bother making the breakout boards at the moment as I have purchased a CSMIO/IP-S, a CSMIO/MPG and a CSMIO/ENC.
This controller has all I wish for, 24v I/O Differential Step/Direction, Analogue I/O etc
It is overkill for this wee lathe but I decided to buy it and test it out on the wee lathe, if it works well then I will likely swap it over onto the big lathe and maybe put the ESS onto this one.
Heres a couple of pics, first is the back of the top control panel which houses the all in one computer/screen and on the back door I have the CSMIO controllers. The second pic is just a view directly down onto the back door so that the components can be seen. They are very professional looking and my hopes are high for it

Hood

They look very professional indeed. Can't wait to see how it works for you.

Dan

Got a wee bit more done the last few evenings. Made a panel up dor the switches/MPG/Pots/leyboard.
Wired up the rotary switches and MPG and tried them out in simulation and it seems to work well but without an axis hooked up I cant say for sure.
The MPG operation is more like a standard machine in that it has x1 x10 x100 positions, I actually have them set to x10 x100 x1000 in the config as I use metric units. The MPD motion is actually done in the controller rather than via Mach but the DROs get updated that fast that you would not know.
Waiting for the pots to arrive so I can get the Spindle and Feed Overrides wired up and tested.
Anyway so far I am impressed with the controller and the additional modules.
I am not sure what colour I will paint the actual housing for the control/computer, will probably see if I can get a match to the green of the lathe, I think the black panel and computer will look ok with that.
Hood

Well done, nice and compact, my friend-

Dave

Looks good and sounds good. Will be interesting how the MPG works. I have never been able to get the MPG work well with the SS nor the ESS. I want it to work in Velocity/Step mode like on commercial controls but it neither as responsive nor the step size is correct.

Dan