Originally Posted by ger21  No, it's not easy to do. Afaik, there are no stepper drives with this feature available. But, there are USB options for use with Mach3. One is the ncPod, but development stopped on it a few years ago. http://ncpod.oemtech.com/
There is a Mach3 plugin for it, that seemed to be mostly finished, but most of the early adopters of it have abandoned it in favor of the Smoothstepper. www.warp9td.com
There are a lot of Smoothstepper users, but it's been in development for a few years and there are still a few Mach3 features not yet implemented. But for the most part, it works very well.
Another option is http://www.usbcnc.com/
Comes with their control software and hardware motion controller.
And one other by a member here. http://rc.cis.si/projects/cnc_motion/
All of these will work with the G540, or any step and direction drives. |
From a hardware perspective, it is rather cheap to implement USB functionality. I see no reason why an experienced engineer couldn't have done this by now in a pre-existing, proven solution like the Gecko 540. I design and write firmware for embedded hardware as my job and porting code from a legacy I/O port into something like an IEEE library is straight forward. No reason to beat this point to death though as it's not included and that's that. I'm just baffled by this because of how cool and developed this hobby is. I was definitely surprised to see an LPT port. I'll probably just 'man up' and stick with the Gecko 540 as it does everything I could hope for and is a good price.
Originally Posted by ger21 2) Yes. |
Cool, that's what I was hoping you'd say.
Originally Posted by ger21 3)
From worst to best: (imo)
1) Skate bearings on angle or pipe.
2) Carriages from www.cncrouterparts.com
3) DualV wheels and track
4) Linear bearings on round rails (Your choice)
5) Linear bearings on profile rails http://www.automation4less.com/linear.htm
There are many variations of 1-3 as well. |
Very helpful! I assumed a list sort of like this but I had no idea how to order it and I definitely didn't realize there were so many options. Thanks!