Hi Splint,
The smoothness of the stepper motor is determined by 2 factors,
1. How fine the microsteps are and;
2. Smoothness of the step pluses being generated.
The SmoothStepper won't help with point 1, as this is determined by your stepper drive. Most stepper drives use 1/8 or 1/10 microsteps.
The SmoothStepper can help with point 2 though. THis is because it has the step pulse generator inside it, and can generate frequencies up to 4MHz. Although, you don't usually need to generate a step frequency this high, it is the resolution of the generated frequencies that it can produce.
Some of the parallel port generators can only generate steps at 45KHz or 100KHz, so the pulse stream won't be quite as smooth.
The main advantage of the SmoothStepper over a parallel port setup is that you don't need a computer with a parallel port (which are harder to come by now), just a USB port. Plus the additional smoothness I discussed above.
Cheers,
Peter.
Originally Posted by Splint  Hi Peter,
out of curiosity, does smooth stepper make steppers run with comparable smoothness to that of a servo motor? How much advantage is there compared to a traditional set up with a parallel port and microstepping drives?
Cheers
Splint |