Hi,
I don't have the time to mess with them but don't even Arduino or Raspberry Pi's have IO speeds above 1mhz
Yes that is correct and the CPU/CPU's inside a PC are very much more powerful again. The problem is that its not the PC's
fault. Mach4 is a Windows program that has a GUI, a Gcode interpreter and a trajectory planner.
What a PC can't do is generate highly accurate very fast pulse streams. There is just too much going on inside a PC's CPU for
it to concentrate on that one job. Consequently the critical job of timing and generating high speed pulse streams is farmed out
to an external motion controller. You can see the size of the FPGA IC on your 57CNC, its not that big and yet it does the business.
It receives numerical trajectory commands from the PC, be it Mach4 or Mach3 or even UCCNC, and converts those numbers into
pulse streams, so in a real sense its the FPGA which is driving your machine, not your PC at all. As it turns out there are a number
of devices which can generate pulse streams, FPGAs are popular but so are a number of microcontrollers optimized for motor control
loaded with highly sophisticated pulse stream modules and various D(igital)S(ignal)P(rocessing) ICs.
Various controllers use different ICs to do the business, some are faster than others, the ESS and HiCon stand out in that regard.
Thus you could use them to signal at full speed and max resolution.....but why? For reasons that I have already posted all the
extra expense and difficulty in doing so will gain you nothing in terms of accuracy, finish or throughput of your machine.
That time and expense is best devoted elsewhere, maybe a better quality spindle with better bearings......or ground C3 grade ballscrews
rather than C7's.....or cast iron beds rather than aluminum.....etc.
The 57CNC controller is very good and has any number of satisfied customers. Once you realize the trade off/balance that you have to make
then it will have your machine singing at top speed. Get your machine up and running and THEN ask yourself 'would uprating to a faster
controller like the ESS of HiCon make any real difference?'.
Craig