Hello Mauri,
I've read some of your posts and am impressed with you understanding and knowledge, particularly with the communication of M4 to controller. I'm hoping you can help.
I'm deciding between Galil DMC-4080 and the HiCON for my industrial router with nema42 steppers. Since 2010 I've been on Smootstepper ESS, It's been a punishing 7 years.
Moving to M4, but am still on M3, command speed varies motion rate greatly. This is most evident on CV moves. The SS has something they call “controller frequency”, it’s adjustable and has a max of 4khz. This controller frequency directly affects Mach’s CV (constant velocity) feedrate output.
Motor tuning aside, an example is on toolpaths with thousands of tiny 0.002” moves of 5 degrees or less (at F140) a controller freq of 1khz produces an actual feedrate of appx 10 ipm.
Bump the SS controller freq to 4khz and feedrate output jumps to appx 60 ipm with no added jerk at the machine. Motor velocity and acceleration settings and performance are unaffected, just commands are occurring at a higher rate providing an increased feedrate output. The SS plugin crash rate dramatically increases at 4khz.
Better gCode is a solution, but the M3/SS bottleneck exists even with direct cat5 connection of fast computer to SS. The SS plugin and/or controller are to blame*.
My big question is… do you think the HiCON (with M4) will outperform the SS with regard to processed commands per second?
Any of your thoughts are deeply appreciated. Thanks!
-Haik
*SS controller freq, number of lines to precalculate and M3 look ahead lines, CV settings, motor tuning and more have all been thoroughly exercised.