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    Default porting software

    Eric, Have you given any thought to porting your controller software to alternate controller cards? or are you going to be able to continue to produce the or acquire the pci cards? I have often thought your system would be an excellent choice for retro fitting older machines with good mechanical systems and bad brains.

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    It remains unlikely that we will port our interface over to other controllers. Major headache, tremendous amount of work, very little return. I never say never, but at this time, I see nothing in it for us, other than making some other controller better!

    Armor CNC is in the process of working with the owners of Techno CNC to acquire the IP outright, but if we don't, we'll make "techno compatible" PCI-express cards (we're not going to bother with PCI anymore), and rebuild the software around our new controller with the option to allow it to work with the old techno controllers where necessary.

    We are seriously considering a package to retrofit machines with Armor electronics. We've already retrofit one of those "import" machines, with new electronics, and it was quite a nice difference. No rats nest of wires, no difficult interface, no software crashing... it worked well! Even down to the handwheel, which could also be used for feed rate override.

    The second version of our new controller will support step and direction out, so people could hook it up to steppers, even though I don't like them in precision motion control. Mostly, we're doing it for step servo amps, which i also don't love, but we're not going to be able to ignore that much of the market, and in certain situations, they're good to use.

    As far as parts, electronics, etc, Armor CNC will be able to keep all old Techno equipment running, regardless of what breaks, needs replacement or repair.

    Sorry I didn't get to this sooner, I forgot to subscribe to my own forum!

    Eric Feldman - Design Engineer, Programmer
    Armor CNC - http://www.armorcnc.com Support hours: 7am thru 10pm EST, 7 days a week


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    Excellent. it's all good to know. is there any difference in feed rates and operating frequencies available with the pci express cards and the old pci s400 servo card?



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    No way. Speed is defined by motor power and amplifiers, not the bus architecture.

    Eric Feldman - Design Engineer, Programmer
    Armor CNC - http://www.armorcnc.com Support hours: 7am thru 10pm EST, 7 days a week


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    I was thinking in terms of encoder count. I had a problem once because I had a 10k count encoder and 5mm pitch screw, I had to run quite slowly until I got back to a 4k count(1000 line quad) encoder.

    also, I am curious, if you set the software up to do step and direction will you have encoder correction capability for steppers and step direction servo drives?



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    Member ericscottf's Avatar
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    Let me do some math...
    Was your 10k encoder direct drive to a 5mm pitch screw?
    How fast were you trying to go?
    Important: Did you lower your servo parameters when you increased the line count? because if you didn't, you just more than doubled your error response. I'd put my bet there first!

    Encoder correction: Yes, we will have it, but only because it will be there from the servos. Will it be worth anything? probably not. On the stepservos, they track the encoder, so they will correct. If a pulse was lost between the pulse generator and the drive, well, we can compensate for that, but that shouldn't happen in a properly set up system.

    As far as steppers, if you're losing pulses, it's my opinion that compensating isn't going to help much. Either the servo is under powered, or you're at a resonance point, so stuffing more pulses in there awkwardly will only lead to more choking. When it comes to steppers, you have to look at why you're losing the pulses, and attack that aspect.

    Mostly, the system will do step+dir because it's easy for me to add, and primarily for stepservos.

    Eric Feldman - Design Engineer, Programmer
    Armor CNC - http://www.armorcnc.com Support hours: 7am thru 10pm EST, 7 days a week


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    Eric,
    I went out to a clients that was having problems with 1 axis on a 3 axis machine. turned out to be a mechanical issue, but while I was there I did an install of the latest version of the interface. It wouldn't run, it kept telling me that it couldn't find files that were right there in the directory, any suggestions?

    also, I was running probably at between 2 and 5 M per minuit when Im was having the issue with the higher resolution encoder, I have a similar issue on a rotary axis I built out of a super spacer and servo motor too high a speed and the counts get out of whack. It was a result of a very and unnecessarily high frequency count, I'm pretty sure.



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    What files is it unable to find? If it is technopnp.dll, that's a problem with the drivers not being installed properly, or mismatched drivers.

    5 meters per minute on a 5mm pitch direct drive screw with a 10k encoder count (is that pre or post quadrature?) would be equivalent to well below the top speed of other Techno CNC products using the same equipment. I think something else might be going on there. I can work with you on figuring it out if you're interested, there are a bunch of things we could try. Let me know if you want to.

    Eric Feldman
    ARMOR CNC

    Eric Feldman - Design Engineer, Programmer
    Armor CNC - http://www.armorcnc.com Support hours: 7am thru 10pm EST, 7 days a week


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