Let's Get The Show On The Road......

[santiniuk]

No problem Rance.

The thread that kick started my MPG work is :-

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10369

Towards the end of the thread you will see some good advice from GER21. He described what was required to make an input toggle the axis selection.

In summary you :-

I simply setup an OEM input #1. Then in system hotkeys added a code 175 to trigger #1.

Thats it really, from a connections setup it's simply a supply voltage to the encoder which will be encoder specific. Mine is 12-24V DC, then two outputs A and B to a couple of parallel port inputs. Another input is used for the axis selection switch.

For what it takes I would recommend it. Works well with Mach III.

Cheers

[Rance]

Thanks for the info. Santini.

Well, it took me almost a week but I went back and read this entire thread from the very beginning. It read like a book. I wanted so much to turn to the end to see how it turned out but I did my best not to. Santini, don't know how I missed it before but sorry to hear about your father in law, I hope you and Kelly's family are doing well with the adjustment.

I got to the part about your garage and started drooling (figuratively speaking, that is). Glad you got your new space. I am particularly interested in the outcome of the PicStep successes. That's what got me started reading this thread. Did all you users get yours working well? Do tell.

Alan, do you have a thread for discussion of your PicStep? I would be very interested in reading more. Looks like you have done a great job with the board and I applaud your willingness to share it with others. For what it's worth (maybe not much), after reading this whole thread, I'd be inclined to want the bare minimum for a driver board, no LEDs, but including the latest torque firmware. I'd rather see the LEDs attached near or at the motors themselves where they don't affect some of the delicacies of the electronics (that includes dealing with laptop port issues). I'll agree w/your view on keeping each channel on a separate board for troubleshooting & spare interchangability. Also I don't see why the boards have to be so big, seems like a board 1/2 the size would work. Maybe I could help with that? On the other hand (in addition to just having 5 more fingers), I can see that this is your baby and you did what you felt was best, given your own parameters and needs.

[ Edit: PS, and I'd rather have single-sided. Installing the many wires doesn't bother me. That's MUCH less of a problem than trying to solder doublesided w/o plated holes and getting the registration correct. ]

Hope you are all making progress and all doing well. I have more questions but this will do for now. Thanks to all of you for documenting all of this.

Rance

[geoffd]

Thay are not in the UK, but I have used Olimex in Bulgaria. The boards were of good quality and came with-in a week of me emailing off the Master files, and if you use Eagle to do the board they will post process it for free.

I am planning to use them again when I finish the design of my next PCB, and then probably for my motor board.
Cheers
Geoff

[scrat]

Hi,

Has anyone ever built the input daughter board ?

I've built it but i'm still looking for the value of the decoupling capacitor.

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95330

will a 1uF MKT do ?

Best regards,
Raf