Has anyone tried to control a CNC router/plasma cutter using a wireless scheme such as Z-Wave or Zigbee? The advantage would be less wires needed, just power. Disadvantages would be possible corruption of data due to high frequency noise, but the newer wireless schemes are pretty immune to such corruption. I'm thinking of trying to use Zibgee for wireless tranmsission to/from the motors, and would like to know if anyone has any experience doing something like this.

you still have to run power out there to the motors. I don't see the point really. Zigbee is pretty slow. We run autonomous robots with WiFi, and it's a really bad idea to have that wireless link in the forward control loop. Supervisory, ok, but the thing that's keeping your machine from crashing should not be wireless.

Agreed. The wireless protocol overhead might not be good for timing intensive applications like CNC control. Of course, that depends on what kind of drives you have but most would be at high risk. Would you trust an emergency power off button over a wireless link? On the other hand, you might be able to remotely control a tethered controller. In this case, the CNC control is fully under wired command while you operate it remotely from another PC, for example. Even then, I like to be close to that big red button just in case something needs aborting.

JR

Wireless + CNC = bad idea

Been there.

-B

Thanks for the feedback. I'll build my system wired.

Then, if I still want to participate in masochist behaviors for the sake of education, I may give wireless a try some time in the future after I get everything else working right.