Hi all, I'm in the process of converting an Industrial Hobbies manual mill to a CNC (Mach3 of course), partially using their kit, and partially my own experience with Automation and Control systems.
Anyway, I'm going to use cnc4pc's step and direction board to talk to a vfd, and will probably use one of my old plc's as a modbus slave for certain aspects of control of the system. As I'm sure most folks don't have an unlimited budget and must balance performance against cost (as do I), I would like to get a recommendation on a spindle speed detection component to provide a closed loop speed control system. I'm currently planning on taking the speed reference off the top of the spindle shaft, since I've got about 5 inches exposed on the top of the gearbox head.
Thoughts and recommendations?
David